West's first novel, it presents a young man's immature and cynical search for meaning in a series of dreamlike encounters inside the entrails of the Trojan Horse. Balso, the protagonist, comes across the Trojan Horse in the tall grass around Troy and promptly seeks a way to get in: 'the mouth was beyond his reach, the navel provided a cul-de-sac, and so, forgetting his dignity, he approached the last. O Anus Mirabilis!'