When the elderly Ariel Price, world-famous architect, receives a letter from a would-be biographer announcing his intention to move forward without Price's approval or authorization, he decides that there is only one response. The biographer will have to die.

As Price's sinister past is revealed, other seemingly unrelated characters are introduced: Evelyn, the young victim of Price's erotic obsession; his crippled, mysterious apprentice, Cosimo; the performance artist Scilla, who has claimed one of Price's creations - an underground mall - as her own; and of course Theseus Crouch, the would-be biographer who threatens Price's precious reputation.

These lives converge in a surreal, labyrinthine narrative, building up to the novel's climax: the dance of death between the man who has destroyed the public space - the modern architect - and the man who has destroyed the private - the invasive biographer.