This is Jim Fraser's story: an incredible, often chilling account of his life as an army deserter living through the terrible upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, when China descended into a moral and physical chaos so extreme that cannibalism became, for some, the only way of survival. Unable to speak the language and totally ignorant of local customs, Jim Fraser makes his home in a community so isolated that even the Cultural Revolution impinges little on the ways of the villagers. Except that the village's very isolation has made it the perfect location for experiments of sheer, indescribable terror . . .