
                                               Howard Ingham finds it strange that no one has written to him since he arrived in Tunisia
- neither the film director that he is supposed to be meeting in Tunis,  nor his lover in New York who is,  he hopes,  missing him. While he waits around at a beach resort,  unable to get going on the film script he is there to write,  he starts work on a new novel,  about a man living an amoral double life. Howard also befriends a fellow American who has a taste for Scotch & a suspicious interest in the Soviet Union,  & a Dane who appears to distrust Arabs intensely. When bad news finally arrives from home,  Howard thinks he may as well stay & continue writing,  despite the tremors in the air of violence,  tensions & ambiguous morals.                                             
