The principal character and narrator is a boy (in later sections a young man), Tristan Smith, who has been born with malformations to his face and limbs so extensive that the physicians who perform the delivery recommend that he be given no care.

Tristan is largely raised on the premises of the Feu Follet, an avant garde theatre collective of which his mother is the guiding force.

His presumptive father is Bill Millefleur, an actor in the troupe and Felicity's lover, but two other men also exercise paternal roles in his life to an extent.

One is Vincent Theroux, a manufacturer and politician, who has also been Felicity's lover; the other is Wally Paccione, an ex-convict who is the production manager of the Feu Follet.

Tristan is born in Chemin Rouge, Efica's capital, and visits other parts of the country during the Feu Follet's annual regional tours.

His mother, however, is not a native Efican, having been born and raised in a distant and more powerful fictional nation, Voorstand, which on the map loosely resembles Australia.

The Reds favor Efica's unequal alliance with Voorstand, as a result of which a network of Efican caves has been threaded with cable in order to create a giant antenna used to communicate with submarines.