Lilah Kemp, schizophrenic and one of a triumvirate of main characters, announces in the opening scene that she may have released the character of Kurtz from the pages of Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness. Add to this fantastic formula a couple of psychiatrists named Charles Marlow and Rupert Kurtz and a huge cast of secondary players set in a futuristic pollution- and plague-ravaged Toronto, and you are left with a bizarre reinterpretation of not just one of the classics of literature, but the age-old tale of power and corruption itself. Conrad did not invent this story, Findley shrewdly points out; he just gave it a name: Kurtz.