When Heathcliff is blown from the pages of Wuthering Heights he is sodden and rejected, but resolute and hankering for revenge. Heathcliff travels from the Yorkshire moors to the docks of Liverpool, where he boards a ship to Sierra Leone and from there to a sugar plantation across the Atlantic. In these three lost years he is prisoner and gaoler, smuggler and swindler, son and slave trader. When he returns, he is the storm that destroys Cathy and dismantles a dynasty. Viewed almost entirely through the eyes of other characters, Heathcliff is in turn a brutalised boy to be pitied and a cruel malcontent bent on retribution. This Thing of Darkness challenges the cliched notion of Heathcliff as a romantic hero and facilitates a new and daring reimagining of this iconic character.