The main character and narrator, the nomad Breyten Wordfool, takes the reader on a journey, on many journeys, through his own history and the places where he lives and works and regularly visits: Paris, Spain, Gorée (Senegal), Cape Town, New York, Vietnam: This should be kept in mind as I write Breyten Wordfool’s black book of impressions. One must not let go of the memories; maggots and grubs are always needed to transform that which has been lived.

Memories and impressions of real events – being arrested in 1975 at Johannesburg airport for alleged terrorist activities, witnessing the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001 – are alternated by surrealistic fantasies, dreamlike sequences, philosophical thoughts, fictions. He reports angrily, lyrically, humorously, daringly on our troubled times.