Through the lives of Metodi and Konstantin, the two antagonists who star in this novel and respectively embody power and resistance, Ilija Trojanow recreates the history of Bulgaria from the end of World War II to the present day. Konstantin, a dissident and opponent of totalitarian rule who spent twenty years in prison for a counterrevolutionary attack, now ekes out a living in a tiny apartment on the outskirts of Sofia, obsessed with scouring archives for documents that will help him uncover his informers. Metodi, who joined the Party's youth corps as a teenager and eventually became a senior official in the state security services, has adapted to the new political status following the transition. Through both characters—based on the author's conversations with victims of the secret police during the communist regime in Bulgaria—Trojanow pays his personal tribute to the victims of communist repression, which official history continues to silence.