In this new novel by the celebrated author of The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague, Prokop Poupa, a professor of literature in Prague, is dismissed by the communist regime and reduced to working as a cleaner in a block of flats. He negotiates this diminished existence among a circle of dissidents, until his young son emigrates with his former wife to England, and the arrival of the Velvet Revolution finds Prokop haunted by past bereavements and betrayals and unable to reintegrate himself into society with its new challenges.