Albert Camus meets Philip K. Dick The patient waking up in hospital with severe amnesia soon realises that the only way out of there is to accept the identity of the man he is secretly convinced tried to murder him - a mediocre philosophy professor called Rene Quite. His quest for vengence on Quite takes him to the decaying resort of Scarby-at-Sea. Yet even in its grey mundanity lurks the exotic: a capricious clock that bites unwary fingers, an apolitical aspdistra, a philosophical pensioner who worships his dog and silent children borne high upon the wings of paper aeroplanes. Strange new friends bring him dark fables: how a nurse contrives to rescue a student turned into a domestic sex-pet; how a once cunning pimp is destroyed by infatuation for a pretty pebble; how a sculptor creates a tomb for herself - then cannot wait to use it. But will he ever find a story strange enough to solve the mystery of who he really is?