Notes for something Kafkaish, cont'd:
A protagonist, a bit adrift, attempts to compose the events of the past into a recognizable history, but encounters considerable difficulty. Perhaps he is the child of civil servants, and knows that confidential government work basically destroyed his parents and his family, and also he knows that, after he left their home, networks of corrupt people made short work of what he thought to be his life's work and then two subsequent attempts at a career in the learned professions. The question, the thing that keeps him from understanding the story, is the degree to which these things might be connected. Is it the nature of the country and society that such things happen, or did something happen within the world that encompassed both events and made his experience unique from the others?
Knowing the story seems to take on added importance, as he senses even the smallest, least remunerative opportunities closing themselves off to him outside the world of the corrupt networks, and the darker contacts and context of the old home. Fathoming the reason for the vanishing of the light -- a peculiar impulse, perhaps.
At any rate, an interesting piece of fiction.
The point might be wondering at the urgency of knowing such things, when the knowledge would seem to be of little avail.