...While walking with his head down, he suddenly sees a "dime" on the ground, a ten-cent coin that was used in America as a telephone token at the time. He grabs the coin and runs back to the telephone booth. He closes the door, picks up the receiver, and drops the coin into the slot while his hand goes to the phone dial. But just as he is about to dial the first digit of a number, he stops. His facial expression changes from joy to sadness. He lets the receiver hang and steps out again. But why didn't he make the call?

From this question, which is prompted by a student black-and-white short film, Apostolos Doxiadis embarks on an investigation that in many ways resembles a detective search, trying to find the cause of a great, still unhealed sorrow. He moves from today to 1968, from Athens to Washington and back again, with real and fictional characters intertwining, aiming for an answer that will unlock the mystery and heal. But the answer takes on deceptive forms.

Between novel and autobiography, confession and analysis, The Call That Wasn't Made is simultaneously a narrative and a reference to a person who, while playing the most important role in the story, systematically hides from the author and the reader.