Roy Strang is in a coma, but his mind is filled with memories. Some are more real - about the life of the Edinburgh outskirts - and are conveyed in grotesquely vulgar, inert language. Others—a fantasy about the hunt for an African marabou stork—are told in the vivid, imaginative language of an English gentleman. Both stories are fascinatingly interesting both in themselves and in their counterpoint - as a sharp contrast between real life, full of dirt and violence, and fictional life - noble and sublime. The story of Roy Strang is a shocking trip into the life and consciousness of the modern English lumpen.