'The most difficult thing to face is your own stupidity,' says Fay Jassahn at the beginning of a trip through Kenya and Ethiopia. She has just finished work on a film and is eager to see more of Africa by following the Rift Valley north. But it is 1974, a revolution is brewing, and Ethiopia is the wrong place to be young, naïve and alone.

One by one, travellers arrive in the border town of Moyale. Fay, Graham, Mel and Dutch Peter are all on their way to find Addis Ababa. And by chance, it seems, they are following a mysterious American woman who went the same way only a week earlier. Everyone has a different purpose, disclosed or otherwise. But all their plans are upset by the chaos and violence they find, as Ethiopia overwhelms good and bad alike.

Fay learns painfully that ideas of crime are bound up with ideas of civilization. When civilization crumbles, what is crime? The lessons she learns are as much about herself and her companions as they are about the unwelcoming terrain. Her ultimate discovery -- that crime is indeed at the heart of this testing journey -- will shock the reader as much as it does Fay.