It is the story of an amnesiac re-discovering his past life through a surreal collection of clues he has left himself while evading a steampunk villain and the shark of the title.

He is told by a psychologist that he has a dissociative condition known as fugue but a trail of written clues purporting to be from his pre-amnesiac self describe a more fantastic and sinister explanation for his lack of memories.

According to these, he has activated a conceptual shark called a Ludovician which "feeds on human memories and the intrinsic sense of self" and is relentlessly pursuing him and will eventually erase his personality completely.

When the Ludovician attacks Eric Sanderson, he decides to go in search of a doctor named Trey Fidorous, identified by the letters from his previous self, in the hope he may be able to help to explain what happened to him and how to defeat the shark.

Scout takes Eric to meet Fidorous, travelling through un-space (an underground network of empty warehouses and unused cellars).

They begin a romantic relationship during the journey but Eric feels betrayed when he discovers that Scout has brought him to Fidorous to use him as bait for the shark in the hope of destroying Ward.

[4] These extra 'un-chapters' (also written by Steven Hall) have been found periodically since the book's initial release, hidden either online or in the real world.

One of two characters to know Sanderson both before and after his amnesia, Fidorous is described as an archetypal eccentric academic who is the definitive expert on the pseudo-scientific world that conceptual sharks and Mycroft Ward inhabit.

In the present of the narrative Ward is seen as an internet-based network of linked intelligences with the single-minded purpose of self-preservation through absorbing people's personalities.

[9] Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) has completed a Raw Shark Texts screenplay[10] for Blueprint Films.