The three volumes of Jens Bjorneboe's personal odyssey into the inhumanity of man, translated into English. The works range through the whole gamut of human destructiveness, from religious persecution to wars to colonial exploitation, in search of an answer to the problem of the evil of mankind - and, equally unfathomable, the problem of the goodness of mankind. The narrator, who takes on various guises as the investigation proceeds, struggles to maintain a stance of disinterested detachment, but is increasingly drawn into the conflict he is observing.