The title character, Asterios Polyp, is a professor and architect of Greek and Italian descent who teaches at Cornell University in Ithaca. After a lightning strike burns up his apartment, he leaves the city on a Greyhound bus and takes up employment as an auto mechanic in the town of Apogee (somewhere in America), the farthest point his money will take him. The novel is interspersed with scenes from his past (ostensibly narrated by his stillborn twin brother, Ignazio), including his childhood and troubled marriage; as well as dreams and allegorical sequences. Finally, he must confront not only his own flawed nature, but the implacable and amoral whims of the gods themselves.