It is All Saints' Day, 1917. Our narrator, a former soldier, recalls the events surrounding his arrival at the home of Jacques Nueil, an aviator and avant-garde composer. The Great War is leading up to images of the Russian Revolution, and from Nueil's villa the narrator hears the sounds of bombs dropping in the distance. This carefully paced, mysteriously atmospheric novel is inspired by vivid memory and by two images, Goya's engraving entitled La Mala Noche and Burne-Jones's painting King Cophetua and the Beggar Girl.