Against a background of war breaking out in Europe and the Mexican fiesta Day of Death we are taken through one day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin a British consul living in alcoholic disrepair and obscurity in a small southern Mexican town in 1939. The consul's self-destructive behaviour perhaps a metaphor for a menaced civilization is a source of perplexity and sadness to his nomadic idealistic half-brother Hugh and his ex-wife Yvonne who has returned with hopes of healing Geoffrey and their broken marriage.