It is a place where humans may scratch an existence - until the rains fail. Then the people must go to the towns, and an age-old, elemental way of life confronts a newer society, one that strives to be part of the modern world but is itself built on shifting sand. Tanner is a stranger in this, his father's land, Sudan. He travelled here from his mother's arid England in search of some kind of fulfilment, but now he is stranded in the stagnant pool of Khartoum, a silent witness to the suffering around him. The current of his life quickens with the arrival of a mysterious American, who may be technocrat or terrorist. With him Tanner travels south, into the heart of the desert, where there is no more room for compromise...