The attempted murder of a Turkish secret service agent brings to light a passionate and destructive love, but the darkness persists as the Greek housewife of his young lover, who has disappeared, is also attacked. The interrogations focus on the realm of leftist thinking...

Sentat is a dedicated agent. His wife and children do not fill the void in his life. He falls in love with Mine and his love for her becomes intense and destructive. A forbidden love, intrigues within the intelligence gathering service, conflicts between the military and the secret police, breathless chases in dark alleyways, deaths that went unreported, lives that were destroyed.

Although the central theme of the book is death and guilt that crush and annihilate a person, the secondary stories give another dimension to the novel that concerns the fate of the peoples living in Istanbul today. Mrs. Eleni and Maria, two of the last Greeks in the city who are chosen as victims by their neighbors, Netzo the Bastard who traffics small children, the patricide and uxoricide Juma, the intellectual Sinan, the poet Fakhri live in the deteriorated old Greek neighborhoods - some with the nightmarish present and others with their memories - the end of an era that we see unfolding, in a shocking way, before our eyes.