Taking place in a single day, the story follows a solitary Parisian bank security guard who undergoes an existential crisis when a pigeon roosts in front of his one-room apartment's door, prohibiting him entrance to his private sanctuary.

The book was Süskind's follow-up to his nine-year bestselling first novel, Perfume and drew comparisons to the work of Franz Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe.

His youth, which was not the most pleasant, explains to a large extent this withdrawal: in 1942, his mother was deported to the Drancy concentration camp; in 1953, he went to war in Indochina and in 1954, his uncle persuaded him to marry Marie Baccouche, who was unfortunately already five months pregnant and in love with another man with whom she later fled.

He commits a few blunders on his morning shift and unintentionally tears his trousers during his lunch break: these events, which are of no major importance, take on the dimension of a drama in his eyes.

He goes so far as to envy the tramp he has been seeing every day for years, who seems at that moment to embody a model of carefreeness and freedom, far removed from his own anxieties.