Hector Terries, Distinguished Professor of History and a world famous, if controversial, figure in his field, arrives in Athens from Australia in 1985 hoping to discover what had happened to his former fiance, Alathea, who had inexplicably disappeared without a trace from the city twenty-four years earlier. Though a convinced rationalist and materialist, he comes to feel that he is being haunted by the ghost of the missing woman, whose phantom he encounters on several occasions. Researching Alathea's disappearance, Hector becomes unwittingly involved in terrorist violence, official corruption, multiple murders, and romantic entanglements, as well as highly disquieting psychic phenomena, eventually uncovering hidden truths so devastating that his hitherto dogmatic scientism is shaken, leaving him transformed by the experience. He finally realises that though his misfortunes seem to stem from the chaotic and vicious era in which he is living, he has in fact been condemned from birth to play a fated role in a contemporary Greek tragedy, with its roots stretching back into a far-distant past.