During a propaganda parade, a young man working for the state-controlled media agency experiences a vision of the ancient general Agamemnon who warns him of the repercussions of his love affair with a high-ranking official's daughter in the title novella, in a collection that also includes the short stories "The Blinding Order" and "The Great Wall."

A fictionalized political tale based on true-life events and the author's conversations with the victim's son follows the events surrounding the death of Mehmet Shehu, a hand-picked successor to hated ailing Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha who succumbs to an unlikely suicide and sparks a government maelstrom.