Marion and Shiva Stone, born in a mission hospital in Ethiopia in the 1950s, are twin sons of an illicit union between an Indian nun and British doctor. bound by birth but with widely different temperaments they grow up together, in a country on the brink of revolution, until a betrayal splits them apart. But fate has not finished with them - they will be brought together once more, in the sterile surroundings of a hospital theatre.

From the 1940s to the present, from a convent in India to a cargo ship bound for the Yemen, from a tin operating theatre in Ethiopia to a hospital in the Bronx, this is both a richly visceral epic and riveting family story.