Sheikh Ben Kadem, prime minister of the emirate of Dofa, wonders how to play, being the head of a miserable state, completely eclipsed by its oil producing neighbors, a role in the international arena. To do this, he devises a ploy: to simulate bomb attacks provoked by a Phantom Liberation Front. And thus plays the trick of awakening the sympathies of international revolutionary movements and the concerns of the great tutelary powers. To execute his plan, he resorts to a young adventurer, Shaat, whom he takes out of prison, where he is serving a sentence for trafficking in gold. Shaat will make bombs that a rogue named Mohi will arrange. However, this false wave of terrorism will escape the prime minister's control, and Mohi - who is his natural son - will die as a result of the explosion of the bomb he was carrying. At the center of the whole matter is, as an exceptional witness, an aristocratic outcast, Samantar, who embodies skepticism, intelligence, wisdom and phlegm, so dear to all Cossery's heroes. In this novel, which translates for the first time into Castilian, we find again the quiet charm, the bizarre characters, the Orient at the same time real and dreamy that enthroned the author of Beggars and proud.