Shortly before the start of the Spanish Civil War, a young man from Tangier is assigned to a disciplinary company in charge of carrying out firing squad executions in Cape Juby, in North Africa’s Spanish protectorate. The novel chronicles the protagonist’s life up until the end of 1939. Along with the harsh conditions of the African desert and the horror of the task entrusted to him, he faces a personal battle to free himself from his father’s shadow, which makes him relive his past. As the author says: “Each generation hopes that the generation that comes after it will resolve what was left pending by the previous generation.” The novel explores political ideas “not as an official attitude towards social or state powers, but as yet another extension of one's own personality and, therefore, of the human condition.”