Julius begins taking evening walks through New York City as a release from his final year of psychiatry residency.

Julius's Sunday walk is disrupted by the New York Marathon, and he detours to visit his former professor Saito, who has cancer.

Nadège calls Julius to end their long-distance relationship.

Julius watches 'The Last King of Scotland' at a movie theater and leaves disturbed by its interpretation of African history.

Julius visits a Queens detention facility with Nadège's church group and listens to Saidu describe his harrowing journey fleeing Liberia.

Julius has his shoes shined by Pierre in Penn Station, a Haitian man who reveals he was once enslaved in New York.

Julius decides to spend his winter break in Brussels, hoping to locate his estranged Belgian grandmother.

On the flight to Brussels, Julius meets Dr. Maillotte, a retired surgeon who describes growing up through World War II in Belgium.

Julius meets Farouq, an internet café employee in Brussels, and debates politics, Islam, and racial identity with him.

Julius returns to New York and learns that his psychiatric patient V. died by suicide while he was abroad.

Julius runs into Moji Kasali, a woman he knew in Nigeria, at a New York grocery store but fails to recognize her at first.

Julius learns that Professor Saito has died; the private funeral is for family only and Julius is not invited.

Julius is mugged by three men near Morningside Park and sustains injuries, including lasting damage to his hand.

At Moji's boyfriend's party, Moji takes Julius to the terrace and accuses him of sexually assaulting her years ago in Nigeria.

Julius accepts a free ride on a tourist boat and, viewing the Statue of Liberty, reflects on birds killed by its lighthouse flame.

Julius, a Nigerian-German psychiatry resident, begins taking solitary evening walks through New York City to escape the pressures of his fellowship. Over the course of a year, he navigates personal losses — a breakup with his girlfriend Nadège and the slow death of his mentor Professor Saito — while encountering strangers whose stories illuminate the city's layered history of immigration and oppression. He travels to Brussels for a winter vacation, hoping to find his estranged Belgian grandmother, and meets intellectuals who challenge his sense of identity. Returning to New York, his wandering deepens as he reconnects with a woman from his Nigerian past and is violently mugged near his own neighborhood. The novel's moral center arrives at a party where that same woman, Moji, confronts Julius with an accusation of sexual assault he has no memory of committing. The story closes with Julius adrift on a tourist boat, gazing at the Statue of Liberty and reflecting on the hidden costs of everything the city promises.

Julius's year of wandering, loss, and a shattering accusation he cannot remember.

Julius hears Mahler playing at a closing Tower Records and is so moved that he leaves so he can think about the music undisturbed.

Julius rides the New York subway at night and compares its underground realm to the domain of the Yoruba deity Obatala.

Julius visits a bookstore and finds a history of early Dutch settlers written by one of his own psychiatric patients.

Tourist children on the subway make openly racist remarks about Black people while their parents pay no attention.

Julius walks through Central Park in the rain, thinking about his split Nigerian and German heritage and his distant German grandmother.

Julius walks to Wall Street and visits the locked Trinity Church, reflecting on Herman Melville's connection to the building.

Julius looks across the harbor at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, contrasting their immigrant symbolism with the history of enslaved Africans brought to New York.

Julius arrives in Brussels and rents an apartment from Mayken; shortly after, a protest erupts following the racially charged murder of a teenager on the metro.

Julius meets a Czech woman at a Brussels café and the two end up spending the night together.

Julius, Farouq, and Khalil have dinner at Casa Botelho, where Khalil makes antisemitic remarks that Julius does not confront.

Julius has dinner with Dr. Maillotte at a Brussels restaurant and asks for her opinion on the discrimination Farouq has described.

Julius visits a photography museum in New York and feels like an intruder while viewing a photograph of Nazi propagandist Goebbels.

Julius cannot remember his ATM pin code and finds the only four-digit number he can recall is the title of a film.

Julius's department chair is removed for using racist language about Asian patients and is replaced by the more competent Dr. Helena Bolt.

Julius finishes his residency and joins a small private psychiatric practice on the Bowery under Dr. David Ng.

Alongside the novel's major turning points, a series of smaller but significant moments define the rhythm of Julius's inner life. From a chance encounter with Mahler's music playing in a closing record store to a tense cab ride with an African driver who refuses to take Julius home, Julius is repeatedly unsettled by the friction between his immigrant identity and the experiences of other Black New Yorkers. His Brussels stay introduces its own complications: a fleeting romantic encounter, a dinner at which antisemitic remarks go unchallenged, and a frank conversation with Dr. Maillotte who ultimately dismisses the discrimination her city imposes on people like Farouq. Back in New York, small failures of memory accumulate — most visibly when Julius cannot recall his own ATM pin code — hinting at a much darker forgetting beneath the surface. A brief institutional shift at the hospital, when a racist department chair is replaced, offers a flicker of progress before the novel moves toward its close. The pool ends as Julius quietly marks his transition from resident to private practitioner, a milestone that arrives without ceremony.

The quieter encounters and overlooked moments that reveal the texture of Julius's wandering year.

Julius learns from his neighbor Seth that Seth's wife Carla died next door of a heart attack without Julius ever knowing.

Julius takes a cab home and has a tense exchange with the African driver, who stops short of Julius's apartment and refuses to go further.

Julius notices the empty space in the New York skyline where the World Trade Center once stood and feels an unexpected yearning.

Outside Penn Station, Julius is seized by a waking vision of the Draft Riots and mistakes a construction scaffold for a lynching.

Julius's father dies during his third year at the Nigerian Military School, leaving Julius adrift and estranged from his mother.

Julius's music teacher Musibau publicly canes him for allegedly stealing a newspaper, a humiliation rooted in resentment of Julius's mixed heritage.

Julius secretly applies to Maxwell College without his mother's knowledge and wins a full scholarship, arranging his own passage to New York.

Julius wakes in Brussels from a disorienting dream in which he ran a marathon with a sister he does not actually have.

Julius visits the bedridden Saito and learns through quiet conversation that Saito had a male partner who has since died.

Julius calls Nadège to share the news of Saito's death and learns that she is now engaged to another man.

Julius discovers a small memorial identifying the ground beneath Lower Manhattan's offices and streets as an old African burial ground.

At his father's funeral anniversary, Julius suddenly recalls a long-repressed memory of his driver killing a young girl in Nigeria.

Julius's unnamed friend leaves New York permanently after his tenure application is rejected, deepening Julius's isolation in the city.

Julius walks home from Moji's party after her accusation and reflects that no one casts himself as the villain of his own story.

Julius accidentally exits onto a fire escape at Carnegie Hall, looks up at distant stars, and contemplates the vast limits of human sight.

Beneath Julius's wandering year runs a deeper current of revelation and reckoning, beginning with the jarring discovery that a neighbor died without his ever knowing. The pool traces Julius's formative years in Nigeria — the death of his father at boarding school, a public humiliation at the hands of a resentful teacher, and a secret scholarship application that brought him to New York — showing how a life built on difference and concealment took shape early. In Brussels, a dream about a sister he has never had signals how much of Julius's inner world is constructed from fiction and forgetting. Back in New York, visits to the dying Saito become occasions for quiet intimacy, while a repressed childhood memory of a violent death finally surfaces during a moment of private grief. The pool closes with three devastating moments of moral clarity: the discovery of an African burial ground erased beneath the city's commerce, the walk home after Moji's accusation in which Julius contemplates the stories people tell about themselves, and a solitary fire-escape encounter with the stars that makes his blind spot — psychological and cosmic — finally visible.

The buried memories, key decisions, and moral reckonings that expose who Julius really is.