There are historical junctures that compel a writer to detonate the text, rigging it with meanings intended to dismantle the existing decay. In writing this text, Ziad Mahafza attempts, by exposing the current situation and taking its implications to their extremes, to rebuild Amman by exploding the unspoken and destabilizing the monster of corruption that has been assassinating the city's history and stealing its features.

The novel sets the city of Amman as the stage for its events. Through the voices of characters who take turns narrating, it explores a significant aspect of the city's life, examining the changes that have occurred to it and its inhabitants over the past years. While the novel deconstructs the city's present—with its confusion, questions, and anxiety—it simultaneously points to the features of a future fraught with tension, ambiguity, and the unknown.

The story revolves around a Jordanian who decides to return and settle in Amman after nearly a quarter-century as an expatriate in America. With the help of his old friends, he opens a cultural coffee shop in one of its historic neighborhoods. During the brief period in which the coffee shop becomes the talk of the town, the novel's web, through a multi-voiced technique, weaves details and intersects events. Threads intertwine, fates are overturned, and outcomes become complicated. The novel proceeds to peel back a layer of Amman's features and its people's stories, delving deep into softening and shaping the present, discovering what is hidden within us, confronting the fears of tomorrow, and attempting to understand and overcome the losses that devour everyone's dreams and aspirations.

Between Amman, upon which the novel's heroes project their tragedies, disappointments, losses, and suspended hopes, and old friends whose destinies time has managed to mix and scatter, the novel continues to deconstruct this complex world of details. Here, human relationships mix with political, religious, intellectual, and social events, presenting a narrative testament to a vibrant city, surrounded by wars, fires, strife, and turmoil—a city whose face has been colored with much joy, yet has also tasted enough pain, hardship, and denial.