Accompanied by his wife, their cat, and an actor friend, ourautobiographical narrator Ferdinand leaves Paris for Baden-Baden (aWorld War II hideaway for wealthy Germans), is then sent to abombed-out Berlin, and finally leaves for Denmark in search of the goldhe had stashed there prior to the war. With the Third Reich in ruinsand the Allied armies on Ferdinand's heels, North combines documentary realism with hallucinatory images, capturing the chaos of war and its toll on both victim and victimizer.