The bored young ruler of an idyllic Central European country plots a coup against himself and escapes to Venice in search of 'real' experience. There he falls in with a team of ambitious con-men and ends up, to his own surprise, impersonating himself. In this wonderfully droll tale the king's journey through successive levels of illusion and reality teaches him much about the world, his foreordained role in it, and himself. Once again Szerb's gentle irony is brought to bear on some uncomfortable paradoxes of self and the human condition.