In two interconnected, alternating stories, Claude Ollier has written a disturbing, haunting, apocalyptic novel that brings together the end of the Third Reich with the closing of the twentieth century. The first is the autobiographical story of Martin, a French student conscripted into a munitions factory in Nuremberg in the middle of World War II. The other is the story of a nameless writer who inhabits a twilight world where civilization has collapsed.

Claude Ollier, one of the major forces behind the "nouveau roman" and recipient of several prestigious literary awards, including the Prix Me decis, is the author of more than twenty books of fiction, drama, memoir, and criticism.