An official of a powerful empire gradually becomes aware that he might not be living in the most just of worlds. Because yes, that empire prides itself, like all others, on being the pinnacle of civilization and progress, and those who stand opposite it—the barbarians—are nothing but the scum of a way of life to be overthrown.
But this civilized empire practices, in the eyes of our protagonist, methods of repression that only earn it the same label it gives its enemies. The conviction that perhaps these enemies have interesting things to communicate, from a human perspective, grows in the official as he becomes enamored with a barbarian woman whom his compatriots (the official’s own people) have left mutilated. And so, to the point of becoming a reprobate.
The plot may not be the height of originality (and it is easy to see in it a parable about the racist regime of South Africa), but it is saved by the exquisite prose of the 2003 Nobel laureate.