"Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of the road in nothern Wisconsin.." Tje explosion that detonates the narrative of Paul Auster's remarkable novel also ends the life of its hero, Benjamin Sachs, and brings two FBI agents to the house of his oldest friend, the writer Peter Aaron. What follows is Aaron;s complex and moving account of Sachs' secret life, as Aaron attempts, through testimony, to make sense of his friend's challenge to the complacency of modern life.