The protagonists include a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who is accused of murder; a Viennese psychologist; a mysterious librarian with terrorist connections; two Spanish bishops; the city of Lerida, where a thirteenth-century religious debate inaugurated the Inquisition. In the process of uncovering the truth about the shooting death of a fascist innkeeper, the story's characters are confronted with the painful fragility of people who struggle to survive in an eternally hostile world.