A nameless figure arrives unbidden at a far country's department of immigration and declares himself a nonperson. He provides for officialdom no useful biography, and a complicated detention ensues.
Months before the man had resolved to spend down a modest windfall. The money allows him to leave one place for other points. While calling on one, he falls into acquaintance with a woman whose failures and frustrations have led to small-time criminality. By the time trouble besets the woman, her life become more a shambles, another dalliance had come and gone.
He fetches up on a tiny island off another country, the spot now uninhabited but where relations once ran a business. Efforts go towards resurrecting the venture. Lack of foresight hinders, then catastrophic weather intervenes. An unhappy result in the main.
Soon a move further afield, to the far country of immigration detention and more spending down, until declaration of nonpersonhood, when everything must go not one part at a time but all in a single great heave.
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