Through an unnamed protagonist, Giovanni Papini tells a fictionalised version of his life from childhood until the age of 30, when he wrote the book.

As a young adult, he sees himself as a born revolutionary, gathers a circle of like-minded people and develops an increasingly solipsistic philosophy centred on the mind in opposition to God and humanity.

His rationalistic views and celebration of knowledge lead him to an irrational love of power and he desires to write a great literary work that will elevate him above other humans.

According to Daniela Orlandi in the Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies (2007), it is "unanimously considered his greatest achievement", and its best features are "its readability, its characteristic as an epoch-making document, and, last but not least, the fact that it constitutes a sort of testament to the idealism of some intellectuals who would later subscribe to Italy's nationalist and Fascist movements".

He said he read it in one night after which he changed his lifestyle, stopped feeling aimless and began to write with an informal and seemingly spontaneous tone, adopted from Papini.