Leila Mashal, a medical doctor trained at Wits, has taken up politics. Her platform is a single issue: freedom. In declaring her candidacy, she wishes to make public her belief that 'while South Africans hold the vote, they don't hold the power'.

She is also the wife of Tariq Hassan, a renowned photojournalist whose abduction from a Johannesburg hotel made international headlines. Held in solitary confinement in an unstated locale, Tariq contemplates his isolation, his life's work, his longing for Leila, the nature of time, and the torturous effects of abject isolation on his mind.

Flashbacks – narrated from both Tariq's and Leila's points of view – tell the central story of Tariq's abduction. The novel uses different documents and formats to fill in the gaps. Radio interviews, emails, journal entries, newspaper articles, personal recollections – even an opera score – all expand the plot. They provide insight into Tariq's career as a photojournalist, photographing people displaced by conflict and war, from Libya and Palestine, to Afghanistan and Kasalia – a fictional African country in the grip of a brutal civil war. Might Tariq's exposure of covert South African involvement in the civil war in Kasalia have prompted his abduction?