Eduardo, a young Brazilian writer, is an intelligent, precocious boy but his literary promise and ambition remain unfulfilled as he moves from childhood through to marriage. His entanglement in literary circles and the brutalities and emptiness of sexual and social circles are vividly told in a story of fleeting pleasures in the tropical atmosphere of Rio de Janeiro. Eduardo sees his marriage break-up and cannot prevent it. He recognize how meaningless was the suicide of a friend and when he becomes involved in a second suicide he is forced to accept that suicide is not a solution. In this story of a man maturing in an unruly world Fernando Sabino catches the confusion of a whole generation of Brazilian youth. His characters are alive and convincing and they reveal the symptoms and problems of Brazilian life.