Dispensing with the conventions of action, time and place, and analysis of character, Mist proceeds entirely on the strength of dialogue that reveals the struggles of what Unamuno called his "agonists". These include Augusto Perez, the pampered son of a recently deceased mother; the deceitful, scheming Eugenia, whom Augusto obsessively idealizes; and Augusto's dog Orfeo, who gives a funeral oration upon his master's death. Mist even includes a chapter that explains Unamuno's theory of the antinovel.

Anticipating later writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, Unamuno exploited fiction as a vehicle for the exploration of philosophical themes. First published in 1914, Mist exemplifies a new kind of novel with which Unamuno aimed to shatter fiction's conventional illusions of reality. This historic reissue includes a new foreword by Theodore Ziolkowski.