Four young Nigerian brothers, returning from a fishing trip to a forbidden river, encounter a madman, who prophesies that one of them will be murderer, and one of them, victim.
So far, so Sophoclean. In fact, this novel overall is structured not unlike a Classical tragedy. The first few chapters are a bit slow and expository, but once things get going, the prophecy takes on its own life within the family, and each member in turn becomes its victim in his or her own way. There’s an inexorable quality to the plot as it develops, so that the several missed opportunities to avoid disaster (which are perhaps more in the vein of Shakespearean than Greek tragedy) seem both necessary and impossible.