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Genre 

Romance; political thriller; fantasy

Narrator 

Omniscient, anonymous third-person; occasional free indirect discourse

Point of view 

The narrator’s, who moves from character to character, explaining the private thoughts and feelings of each

Tone 

Sympathetic; melancholy

Tense 

Past

Setting (time) 

The not-too-distant past

Setting (place) 

A vice president’s mansion in an unspecified, impoverished South American country

Protagonist 

Katsumi Hosokawa, Roxanne Coss, Gen Watanabe, and Carmen

Major conflict 

As the terrorists and the hostages come to care for and even love one another, the prospect of governmental interference looms

Rising action 

Hosokawa and Coss fall in love; Watanabe and Carmen fall in love

Climax 

Government troops storm the mansion, killing all the terrorists and Hosokawa

Falling action 

Watanabe and Coss marry

Foreshadowing 

Throughout the novel, the narrator intimates that the terrorists’ deaths are inevitable; the lifting of the fog symbolizes the beginning of the end of captivity

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