Feeling death approaching, Baron Béla Wenckheim, who has spent much of his life in exile in Argentina, decides to return to his native Hungary in the hope of reuniting with his teenage love. But his return sows confusion in the town, many of whose inhabitants welcome him as a wealthy benefactor capable of saving them from doom, when in reality he has squandered his fortune in the casinos of Buenos Aires. Even the region's politicians and journalists participate in the wave of increasingly extravagant rumors and misunderstandings. Krasznahorkai skillfully weaves together the multiple voices of this community in a choral and apocalyptic novel that many have considered his masterpiece. An ambitious tour de force from one of the most visionary authors of contemporary European fiction.