The story takes place between 1936 and 1948 in Bucharest and several other European cities, and follows a Romanian man who is on a spiritual quest while being torn between two women.

When Stefan tries to provide refuge for a member of the Iron Guard, he is put in a prison camp and temporarily loses his job.

[1] An English translation by Mac Linscott Ricketts and Mary Park Stevenson was published in 1978 through University of Notre Dame Press.

[1] It received little response from the academic world upon the initial publication, although the Swedish professor Stig Wikander wrote a positive review for Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten.

Not unlike the Russian masterpiece bearing that title, Eliade's novel transcends the particulars of its subject matter—in this case, Romania at the outset of the Second World War—to explore the agonies of man's condition, his inevitable recourse to violence as he fails to understand others and, above all, himself.