Odd Larsen is recently separated and has settled in Nice with French-Algerian Naima. In the evenings, he helps out in the bookshop belonging to Naima’s sister Malika, who in her closeted existence is attempting to live out her dream of an Algeria she does not know. A young Norwegian couple, Tania and Jonas, are on holiday in Nice, and when Odd and Naima come into contact with them, powerful tensions arise among the four. Odd is a cool observer of himself and his surroundings, but his sexual fantasies threaten to overshadow the reality that surrounds him. As one June day follows another, an impending erotic disaster looms.

Unmade Bed is a novel in which futility and fatigue alternate with panic and longing. In concise, terse language, rising and falling levels of desire are expressed as an inevitable precondition for existence.