Through the lost work of the mysterious Geoffrey Peerson Leed, this novel describes a brutal war in an unspecified past as well as Leed's struggle to survive in paranoiac future riven by totalitarianism and social decay. The book is presented in nine parts according to the designs indicated by Leed in the manuscripts that were discovered after his disappearance. Everywhere at its heart, the book speaks boldly to our contemporary moment: a time of unbridled surveillance, constant war, and maddening technological upheaval.