The novel tells the story of a middle-class UNESCO engineer called Walter Faber,
who believes in rational, calculated world. Strange events undermine his securi
ty - an emergency landing in a Mexican desert against all odds, his friend Joach
im hangs himself in the Mexican jungle, and he falls in love with a woman who di
es of a concussion, he has an incestuous affair. Finally Faber becomes ill with
stomach cancer, but it is too late for him to change his life.
