Myrtos is a small boy; he was born sleeping and now, at the age of eight, he has not woken up. Why Myrtos refuses to communicate with the world he came into, we will not learn. He sleeps smiling, with his palm on his cheek, "as if to protect himself from kisses."
Around and beside him, in a closed provincial society of 1940, unsuspecting carriers of Evil, certain that they preach the Good, will drive the novel with chilling innocence. In complete confusion, guilty, and with (unknowingly) a subterranean sardonic humor, they engage in (or tolerate) abyssal acts of melodramatic climaxes: they will push the social environment into scandal and into stoning.
Then Myrtos will awaken. Night. He will set fire and depart. To where?
P. M. [Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]
