A specialist in pyschological warefare is driven to breakdown and madness by the stressed of a project of macabre ingenuity to win the war in Vietnam. A meglomaniac Boer frontiersman wreaks hideous vengence on a Hottentot tribe for undermining the 'natural' order of his universe with their anarchic rival order,mocking him and subjecting him to the humiliations of his own all too palpable flesh. Both the 18th century Jacobus Coetzee and the 20th century Euguene Dawn are in the business of pushing back the frontiers of knowledge and are dealers in death who denounce their own humanity and spurn their feelings of guilt.