 He falls in love with his cousin Mitzi amidst the rise of Nazism, including the Munich Putsch.At the end of the novel, Mitzi, who has lost her sight, enters a convent and Augustine returns to England.Richard Hughes was cadet in training when the 1918 armistice was signed and spent World War II as an Admiralty bureaucrat; it was this experience that caused him to write "The Human Predicament".