Carl Thompson, is an aging biracial writer/musician who was formerly a bestselling novelist. Unfortunately, in Berlin, he has been reduced to hustling and sleeping on friend’s couches. He has an uneasy relationship with his Brazilian girlfriend, Paula Krauss, partly because she is engaged to his close friend, Ted Barnes, a black American novelist—but mostly because she is mentally ill. Ted’s relations with Paula are strained, at best; not so much because she has a second relationship with Carl, or because of his extremely foul temper—but because he wants to end their marriage and hook up with a young Turkish girl (Oslem). The girl, Oslem, is more interested in an R & B saxophonist named Cliff, who is also a friend of Ted (as well as Carl), but whom Ted secretly despises for his mediocre playing.

Ted Barnes, unlike Carl Thompson, is a much more successful novelist. Ted was tired of masquerading as a neo-conservative in New York and has sought refuge in Berlin. Supposedly, he is hard at work on a new novel that will put him at the forefront of African-American letters. However, it has taken him twelve years to finish the novel, and as a result, Ted has lapsed into an obscurity he is unaware of. Carl will discover that the only way out of his artistic obscurity is by writing a major article for a New York paper trashing Ted’s reputation, and that of several other black writers. Carl does not want to be perceived as a “racist,” any more than he wishes to incur Ted’s considerable wrath. Yet he knows in his heart that Ted has lost his artistic edge after 12 drunken years in Berlin. But, then again, so has Carl Thompson.