Summary

Chapter 1 begins with the unnamed narrator sitting on a bench at night in a likewise unnamed seaside town in Turkey. He reflects on how all the other townspeople are sleeping, then on the fact that he just took a life. He remembers holding the gun but not firing the shot, and thinks of how dreamlike the experience was. He reveals that he is a writer and compares his writing style to that of God’s, recalling his intent to come to the small town to write a murder novel. At the end of the chapter, the narrator concludes that the events of the novel are the creation of a “cruel and indifferent God” (10).

Chapter 2 begins the recurring flashbacks which constitute the majority of the novel. The narrator recalls the day he met an as-of-yet unnamed woman, and was struck by her beauty and...