A tale of the mental progress of a boy named Lucien Fleurier from around age 4 to his early adulthood. Lucien, the son of a rich industrialist, searches for identity and meaning in order to find out "what's wrong" with him. He journeys from Freudian psychoanalysis and being a one-time sexual partner of a paederast poet, to finally becoming part of a Fascist youth organisation and killing a Jewish man who is reading l'Humanité, with his friends.
