After eighteen years in exile, the writer Fernando returns to Havana to search for a lost manuscript by the poet José Maria Heredia. His return leads him not only to the secrets of the Freemasons of Cuba, to which Heredia belonged, but also into his own past: Who denounced Fernando nearly twenty years ago, driving him into exile? Padura weaves together three storylines: Fernando's fate, the search for the lost manuscript, and the fictional memoirs of Heredia. At the same time, he conveys an atmospheric picture of Cuba's history, the oppressive feeling of life in exile, and uncovers astonishing parallels in the lives of the two writers from two centuries.