A Caribbean Creole family saga as told by its last surviving member, a hermaphrodite whose memory and imagination uncover multi-layered encounters, from the colonial birth of the New World to the 20th century. This pioneering novel - fantastical, sensuous and enchanting - is a sumptuous reckoning of the nightmares and passions of Caribbean history amid the "hysteria of parrots" and the witchbroom parasite that kills the family's cocoa plantations.