A rash of suicides has sent shock waves through a tightly organized society that officially frowns on such an act but privately makes it unavoidable. How else could people endure in a world carefully calculated to rob its citizens of self-respect and dignity? One man struggles against the overpowering temptation to take his own life, because he realizes that he must survive or else give the strange unseen rulers final victory. The characters in this extraordinary novel of the future share a host of psychiatric disturbances. One is haunted by strange visions in the night; another can reach sexual climax only in the confines of an old jalopy; others share schizophrenic fantasies that give frightening insight into the nature of their anguish.