He served in World War I and has led a cosmopolitan, decadent life for a few years, before being admitted to a mental institution for depression, fatigue and heroin addiction.

He is presented with several opportunities to return to a regular life, but is unable to find any satisfying human connection, and other people have a hard time sympathising with his situation.

[5] Anna Balakian of The Saturday Review wrote in 1965 that "Drieu manages an unsentimentalized objectivity in picturing the futile machinations of Alain's wasted mind[.]"

Thus the book is primarily a mood piece in which night prevails; as such it will be understood by the dispirited of any age and by those who watch with anguish the likes of Alain seeking the tunnel of narcotic release from which there is no exit.

"[6] Kirkus Reviews described the novel as "piquant, perverse, and rather sterile", and wrote: "La Rochelle handles this with a certain boutique decadence and a tired resignation (the novel is subtitled 'autobiographical') which is true to the experience ... but perhaps self-defeating to the book.