The Year is 999 A.D. Christians in Europe are preparing themselves for the arrival of the Messiah at the Millenium and religious fevour is in the air.

Sailing from the North African port of Tangier to a small, distant town called Paris are a Jewish merchant, Ben Attar, his two beloved wives and his Arab partner, Abu Lutfi. They have come for a meeting with their third partner the widower, Raphael Abulafia who has been forced to turn his back on their previous trading partnership because of his new wife's distrust of the dual marriage of Ben Attar. The latter turns this annual trading voyage into a personal quest to legitimise his second wife, restore his honour, and, equally important, to show others the richness and humanity in his way of life.

A.B. Yehoshua has imaginatively recreated a medieval world (from North Africa to Paris, from Spain to Germany) with its merchant trade in great depth and sensuous detail. His evocation of one man's love is lyrical, erotic even.