The last in a long decadent line of piratical Spanish eccentrics, Bartleby Cadiz grows up in isolation to be as mad, bad and metaphysical as his ancestors. But he feels there is something different about him. What can it be? At last the doubloon drops. He is a lesbian trapped in a man's body This realization starts him off on a grotesque voyage of discovery full of ironic transformations, implausible insights and bizarre betrayals, as he quests for true love in a world where friendship is only a theory. But not until an arcane giraffe lures him to a disastrous alchemical redemption will the questions about the farcical nightmare that is his existence find the answers they require...