Set in an unnamed South American country, a narrator we know little about pieces together the story – from journals, interviews, gossip, second-hand reports – of a young man called Nelson who travels through the mountains with a playwright and a motley collection of actors, performing a play that years earlier upset the authorities and had the playwright imprisoned. Nelson regrets leaving Ixta his girlfriend, who has since become pregnant with another man, the consequences of which will in the end overwhelm Nelson.The travelling troupe eventually come to T______, home to the senile mother of the male lover of the playwright, who has since perished in prison. When Nelson, out of sympathy, impersonates the mother’s dead son, chaos ensues as the two strands of the story are bound together.