Vollmann reports from two places where violence had settled into routine. The first is Mogadishu during the American intervention, riding out at night with a Marine squad ordered to confiscate weapons from every faction impartially, led by a corporal who says the frightening thing is never knowing where the enemy is. A man from another platoon is shot on a street they had patrolled that afternoon; a newspaper clipping notes the United Nations withdrawing convoy protection a year later.

The second is the Muslim south of Thailand, where he tries to determine whether the separatist bands are fighting for Pattani and Islam or running extortion rackets, and finds the distinction will not stay put.

The method is deliberately unresolved. First-person narrative is broken up by flat transcripts, a provincial governor, a defector, schoolgirls, low-ranking policemen, an ageing separatist leader, set against each other rather than reconciled.