It was thanks to this book that people started talking about Flanagan as a star of modern prose. He told the story of a man who found himself in a terrible situation - captured by a river. At this moment of mortal danger, pictures from the past appear before the hero’s mind’s eye: family, natives, a village with small huts, kidnapped women, floating prisons, animals, birds. They all circle around him in the water. And he floats down the river. But where?