Told in two voices, one standard English, the other Creole, this novel is an ironic fable of a tragi-comic self-deception. It portrays the tensions between authority, freedom, law, and love in Trinidadian society through the character Manko and the stories of the other local yard dwellers. These range from memories of Trinidad's popular uprisings to a prostitute's narrative of what has led to her occupation. In exploring the popular folk archetype of the self-crucified preacher, the novel takes the balladic form of the calypso to greater depths.