'Only the Dead' recounts the life of Vartan, a young Armenian caught up in the Ottoman Empire's plan to destroy the historic Armenian community in Eastern Anatolia. His involvement with British Intelligence costs his family dearly, and he sets out on a quest for revenge, with horrifying results. He then searches for the girl he fell in love with during a mountaintop siege of six Armenian villages, and this quest alternates with vignettes of him as an old man, alone in a crumbling palace in Beirut as another war rages around him. He finds solace in classical Persian poetry shared with his best friend, a cynical Iranian writer and free-thinker.