Kino visits a country where almost all books are outlawed and kept in a central secure tower, and where writers are revolutionaries. She gets involved in their plot, and slowly loses her grip on what is real and what is fiction.

When traveling down a river, Kino and Hermes reflect back on a few encounters they have had. Each has a common thread of non-intervention, but with the idea that someone who never intervenes can still change things by observing.