The world of the late Middle Ages, with its bathers and jugglers, and the quest for new worlds forms the backdrop of this captivating novel. It tells the life story of the heretic Hardouin, who travels the lands as a showman, driven by a dark past and carrying with him the sensation of the day: the Thing. A hermaphrodite preserved in alcohol. The story recounts how Tiécelin, the only survivor of a lost group of children, is saved from death by Hardouin on a frostbitten night. From the mysterious fortune teller Grand Macabre, he learns the story of the Thing. It is a journey into the lustful revelry of the Carnival of Venice and far into the magical Isfahan to the royal children Nouredine and Zoumouroude. Olivier Sillig's grand novel takes us aboard the Nina on Columbus's voyage westward, and it leads us to the gallows hill before Marseille.