The novel was published posthumously, edited for publication by the literary scholar Dan Miron and Shabtai's wife Edna.

[1] Meir, a 42-year-old architect from Tel Aviv, is suddenly stricken with the fear of dying.

The plot deals with the changes in his life following this realization of his mortality, including an affair with his doctor, the death of his mother, and a trip to Europe.

Unlike Past Continuous, which was written as a single book-long paragraph (broken up in the English translation), in Past Perfect the narrative has been broken down into four parts, and divided further into paragraphs, albeit lengthy ones.

The first part is written in the same Stream of Consciousness mode as the earlier novel, moving seamlessly between Meir's thought and external events.