The Provincial Resident of a desolate province in a South American country has been assassinated. When Manuel Ortega, a minor diplomat, accepts the appointment as the dead man’s successor, it seems a foolhardy decision. From the day he assumes his post he is thrown into a violent, corrupt world, where two extremist political factions are trying to destroy each other. Ortega is the proverbial man in the middle, surrounded by men and women he wants to trust – his secretary, the cynical Chief of Police, and the sullen bodyguards who try to keep the Resident alive. Political and moral undercurrents, and a brutally ironic climax.

The Assignment is another brilliant and tense novel by a Scandinavian Franz Kafka.