This story takes place in an Africa far darker and more terrible than even Conrad imagined, in the midst of an insane African war somewhere along the border between Angola and Zaire. The novel's hero is Elias Almeida, a black revolutionary whose father was killed when Elias was still a child, and whose mother, to feed him, was forced to prostitute herself. Saved from almost certain death by a Catholic priest, Elias becomes a brilliant pupil, seemingly destined for greatness. But the searing memory of his parents turns him into an important cog in the worldwide revolutionary movement, sending him to Cuba and the Soviet Union to be trained for espionage and sabotage, first in his native Angola, still struggling to liberate itself from the colonial yoke, and then to other political hot spots. Yet Elias the revolutionary is also a romantic idealist, who believes in love, beauty, and the possibility of forging a better world. In Moscow, he falls in love with Anna, a young Russian student, and that relationship gives him strength to survive prison, battles, and the many other hells he encounters. The only element left capable of saving Africa from its wars, torture, fallen ideologies, is love, he says as he moves on to his next assignment, love for another individual, love for humanity.