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Plot summary

At the opening of the book, the narrator, an everyman named John (a.k.a. "Jonah"), describes a time when he was planning to write a book about what important Americans did on the day Hiroshima was bombed. While researching this topic, Jonah becomes involved with the children of Felix Hoenikker, a fictional Nobel laureate physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb. As the novel progresses, John learns of a substance called ice-nine, created by the late Hoenikker and now secretly in the possession of his children. Ice-nine is an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature. When a crystal of ice-nine is brought into contact with liquid water, it becomes a seed crystal that makes the molecules of liquid water arrange themselves into the solid form, ice-nine.

John and the Hoenikker children eventually end up on the fictional Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, one of the poorest countries on Earth, where the people speak a barely comprehensible creole of English (for example "twinkle, twinkle, little star" is rendered "Tsvent-kiul, tsvent-kiul, lett-pool store"). It is ruled by the fictional dictator, "Papa" Monzano, who threatens all opposition with impalement on a giant hook.

San Lorenzo has an unusual culture and history, which John learns about while studying a guidebook lent to him by the newly-appointed US ambassador to the country. He learns about an influential religious movement in San Lorenzo, called Bokononism, a strange, post modern faith that combines irreverent, nihilistic, and cynical observations about life and God's will with odd, but peaceful rituals (for instance, the supreme act of worship is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons, supposed to result in peace and joy between the two communicants). Though everyone on the island seems to know much about Bokononism, and its founder, Bokonon, the present government calls itself Christian and those caught practising Bokononism are punished with death.

As the story progresses, it becomes clear that San Lorenzon society is even more bizarre and cryptic than originally revealed. In observing the interconnected lives of some of the island's most influential residents, John learns that Bokonon himself was at one point a de facto ruler of the island, along with an exiled American naval officer. The two men created Bokononism as part of a utopian project to control the population. The ban was simply an attempt to give the religion a sense of forbidden glamour, and it is found that almost all of the residents of San Lorenzo, including the dictator, practice the faith, and executions are very rare.

John finds Felix Hoenikker's son, Frank, in San Lorenzo, where he has managed to obtain a high-ranking government position from the dictator in exchange for a piece of ice-nine. At the time Jonah arrives, the dictator is badly ailing, however, and states his intention to make Frank his successor. Feeling guilty and afraid of the offer, he abruptly hands the presidency to John, who begrudgingly accepts.

The dictator later uses ice-nine to commit suicide as he lies dying from inoperable cancer. Consistent with the properties of ice-nine, the dictator's corpse instantly turns into a block of solid ice at normal room temperature.

During John's inauguration festivities, an airplane crash into the dictator's seaside palace causes his still-frozen body to tumble into the ocean, after which all the water in the world's seas, rivers, and groundwater also turns into ice-nine, causing the death of almost all life forms in a matter of days.

John manages to escape with his wife, Mona. They later discover a mass grave where all the surviving San Lorenzans had killed themselves with ice-nine, on the facetious advice of Bokonon. Through a mix of grief and resigned amusement, Mona kills herself as well. John takes refuge with a few other survivors (an American couple he had met on the plane to San Lorenzo and Felix Hoenikker's two sons), and lives in a cave for several months, during which time he writes a memoir, which is revealed to be the novel itself. He eventually decides to climb the tallest mountain on the island, and the books ends by his meeting on his way a weary and dying Bokonon, who hands him a paper with the last words of The Books of Bokonon.