Paul Bannerman, an ecologist in South Africa, believes he understands the trajectory of his life, with the usual markers of vocation and marriage. But when he's diagnosed with thyroid cancer and, after surgery, prescribed treatment that will leave him radioactive, for a period a danger to others, he begins to question, as Auden wrote, "what Authority gives / existence its surprise."

In the garden of his childhood home, where his businessman father, Adrian, and prominent civil rights lawyer mother, Lyndsay, take him in to protect his wife and child from radiation, he enters an unthinkable existence and another kind of illumination: the contradiction between the values of his work and those of his wife, Benni, an ad agency executive. His mother is transformed by the strange state of her son's existence to face her own past. Meanwhile, projects to build a nuclear reactor and drain vital wetlands preoccupy Paul as if he were at work. By the time he is cured, both families have been changed. On his return to his home and career, his parents go to Mexico to fulfill the archaeological vocation Adrian sacrificed to support his family. The consequence of this trip is the final surprise in this extraordinary exploration of passionate individual existences.

纳丁·戈迪默，南非国宝级作家，出身于一个特权白人中产阶级家庭。从小爱读书，九岁开始写作，十五岁开始发表第一篇小说。戈迪默在政治上强烈反对种族隔离，写有十四部长篇小说和十一部短篇小说集，作品多以描写种族隔离对南非人生活的毁灭性影响为主题，写作手法有节制而不带感情色彩。一九七四年她因小说《自然资源论者》获布克奖，一九九一年因其作品“史诗般的宏伟”而获得诺贝尔文学奖。纳丁·戈迪默被誉为当代世界十大小说家之一。