Set in the months shortly before the 1959 Cuban revolution, the novel takes place in an enclave of Havana known only as the Island. The estate has seen better days; originally built a generation or two before by a wealthy, handsome couple who had immigrated to Cuba from Spain, it became a focal point of Havana society ... until it was discovered that the couple were not man and wife, as had been presumed, but brother and sister. Now vine-choked and overgrown, with vestiges of imitation-Greek statues peering from the underbrush, the Island is inhabited by a motley crew: the Barefoot Countess (who is crazy); Casta Diva, a would-be singer, and her soldier husband, who is mute; Merengue, who earns his living selling pastries from a pushcart; Miss Berta, the pedantic school marm, and her ninety-year-old mother; Irene and her gay son; "Professor" Kingston, the aging Jamaican English teacher; a sculptor who fills the Island with his crude reproductions of classic art; the passing angel; and a mysterious stranger who appears wounded by many arrows, found wrapped in a Cuban flag.

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