Fleeing from the tedium of his everyday life and the painful memory of a dying father, the narrator embarks on a long solitary journey retracing the footsteps of real-life malcontent and misanthrope par-excellence Arthur Cravan, the nephew of Oscar Wilde. As a lambasting critic, poet-boxer, and Dadaist anti-hero, Cravan wreaked havoc on himself and three continents during the course of a short and spectacular life, which led him across the world in an escalating frenzy of self-destruction. Along the way, our young protagonist encounters every species of grotesque human character blighting Europe, the U.S., and South America, until he reaches the shores of the desolate oil town of Salina Cruz, the site of Cravan’s mysterious disappearance. Only there does the true purpose of his journey become at last apparent.