A Kafkaesque novel set in an unnamed Eastern European country, centers around Petir, a clerk in a state-run banking/insurance business, whose job it is to prevent handicapped people from collecting disability or insurance payments by tying them up in bureaucratic doubletalk and red tape. One of his claimants, a psychotic dwarf who Petir uncharacteristically tries to help, sees him, unfairly, as an enemy and begins to stalk him.