A journalist - the autobiographical features are quite deliberate - is trying to find out what happened to Lidia, who disappeared in Luanda in 1992, a point in time when the civil war flared up again with unprecedented ferocity after rebel leader Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA movement refused to accept defeat in the country's first free and democratic elections. The story, a tangled mesh of facts and fiction, tells of the disappointment of the two protagonists, which represents the disappointment of a whole nation.

In this depiction of the devastating history of a country tormented by 30 years of conflict, a journalist investigates the mysterious disappearance of Angolan poetess and historian Lidia do Carmo Ferreira, who vanished from Luanda as the civil war flared up with unprecedented ferocity when the rebel movement refused to accept defeat in the country's first democratic election. A fictive biography of Ferreira's life, this tangled mesh of fact and fiction uses the disillusionment of its two protagonists to re-create the disappointment of an entire nation in turmoil. A careful translation of one of the strongest writers in the Portuguese language today, this novel portrays the agony of a country's struggle for independence.