After escaping from a Nazi concentration camp in Germany in 1937, and then from another camp in Rouen, the unnamed twenty-seven-year-old German narrator of Seghers's masterpiece ends up in the dusty seaport of Marseille. Along the way, he is asked to deliver a letter to a man named Weidel in Paris and discovers that Weidel committed suicide, leaving behind a suitcase containing letters and a novel manuscript. While on his way to Marseilles to find Weidel's widow, the narrator assumes the identity of a refugee named Seidler, though the authorities believe he is actually Weidel. There he goes reconstructing the history of Weidel.
