Forty centuries after the biblical destruction in Sodom and Gomorrah, the same land on the shores of the Dead Sea opens up and a mysterious violet salt gushes forth. Its appearance changes the geography of three continents and monopolizes market interest. The new substance does not serve, but is served. It tyrannizes with its whims. It addicts with its taste. It enslaves with its silent influence. Modern Sodom, the "Colony," proves to be more cunning than even its biblical version. A suffocating atmosphere surrounds their well-hidden secrets, and only one person is able to uncover them: the unsuspecting Phileas Book, who on a night unlike any other will be called to solve the most important crossword puzzle ever devised.

"What did Lot's wife see?" A spectacular novel, a continuous intellectual game, an unparalleled allegory about fear, sin, and guilt, lurking in the wet streets of "seaside" Paris, but also in the dark corridors of the human conscience.