Jacques Austerlitz is a professor of architectural history, a scholar of those places that, especially in the nineteenth century, tended to take on unintentionally visionary forms. Tall, lanky, very much resembling Wittgenstein with whom he shares an old backpack that he constantly carries on his shoulder, Austerlitz lives in London in a bare apartment, devoid of affection and poor in friendships. Behind his doctrine lies a void. Austerlitz simply does not know who he is and at a certain point sets out on a "search for his own traces." The past slowly resurfaces and is harrowing: all the author's wisdom seems to concentrate in this absolutely distressing journey of discovery.