"This is the highest kind of achievement of which fiction is capable. . . . Ranks with the finest European fiction of recent years."—The Christian Science Monitor

Uli Bouwmeester is a retired variety artiste who spends his days whiling away his time. Out of the blue, an invitation arrives to play the leading part in a new drama at the Actor's Theater in Amsterdam, and he is flung with a vengeance from the monotony of life in the suburbs into the reality of the 1980s. All goes well until a television crew arrives to interview Uli, revealing a secret from his past that threatens not only the success of the theater's enterprise but also Uli's life.

"In his corner of Europe, Dutch novelist Harry Mulisch is creating some of the more haunting, provocative fiction to emerge from the continent in the past decade."—New York Newsday