Kingbitter, an editor at a publishing house on the verge of closure, believes himself to have been the closest friend of a celebrated writer & Auschwitz survivor, B, who recently committed suicide. Amongst the papers B has left him, Kingbitter finds a play entitled Liquidation that uncannily predicts the behaviour of B`s ex-wife, his mistress & Kingbitter himself. As he obsessively reads & rereads the play, Kingbitter becomes transfixed with the idea that buried within these papers is B`s great novel: the book that will explain his relationship with Auschwitz.