In a provincial town in northern Argentina, a group of local revolutionaries plans to kidnap an American diplomat, but by mistake seizes Charley Fortnum, a drinking and rather ordinary honorary British consul. Dr Plarr, an English-Argentine doctor with ties to both sides, is drawn into the crisis. The novel explores friendship, politics, faith and responsibility, as characters of very different backgrounds are forced into a tense and humane confrontation.
Quotes
Simplicity belonged by right to those who were native-born, those who could take the conditions of life, however bizarre, for granted.
Death will come in any case, and there is a long afterwards if the priests are right and nothing to fear if they are wrong.
It was not the kind of surroundings in which any one with free will — if such a man existed — would have chosen to await death.
It was an evening which, by some mysterious combination of failing light and the smell of an unrecognised plant, brings back to some men the sense of childhood and of future hope and to others the sense of something which has been lost and almost forgotten.