Azaro, a spirit child, chooses to remain in the material world rather than return to the spirit realm, wanting to make his mother happy.

A fire engulfs the compound during a riot, and strange women smelling of bitter herbs abduct Azaro in the chaos.

Azaro's mother follows an herbalist's instructions and rescues Azaro from the corrupt policeman's house, carrying him home.

Madame Koto makes a toast at Azaro's homecoming feast and asks him to visit her bar daily to attract customers.

Politicians hand out free powdered milk at the compound with megaphones and slogans, igniting a violent and bloody riot.

The entire compound falls deathly ill from the politicians' tainted milk while Azaro's family is spared because Dad threw theirs away.

Political operatives kidnap Azaro from Madame Koto's bar and spirit him away stuffed inside a sack.

Azaro uses a penknife given to him by a bar customer to cut himself free from the sack and escape.

The family's door is hacked with machetes as a threat after Dad refuses to support the landlord's chosen political party.

Azaro refuses all food for days after being punished, falls gravely ill, and sinks into a deep journey through the spirit world.

An herbalist performs a ritual that sends the spirits away, and Azaro wakes to find his parents keeping a vigil beside him.

Dad defeats the Green Leopard, a massive political thug, in a brutal and supernatural-tinged street fight outside the compound.

A man in an immaculate white suit challenges Dad to a fight at Madame Koto's grand party and nearly destroys him.

Mum sings and reaches into Dad's dreams to draw his spirit back while Azaro helps her keep him among the living.

Dad wakes and tells Azaro to respect all living things; the next morning, Azaro finds his parents have disappeared.

Azaro, a spirit child who chooses to remain in the material world for his mother's sake, begins his story being abducted and then rescued, only to find his family drawn into the political chaos of their newly independent nation. The arrival of politicians bearing tainted milk marks the moment politics invades the compound, sickening nearly everyone and cementing the family's dangerous opposition to the Party of the Rich. Azaro is kidnapped again by political operatives before escaping, and the family faces violent threats including the ominous hacking of their door with machetes. In a moment of personal crisis, Azaro's refusal to eat sends him into a near-fatal spirit-world journey from which his parents narrowly rescue him. Dad rises to prominence as a fighter, culminating in an epic battle with the man in the white suit at Madame Koto's grand party that leaves him fighting for his life. Dad's eventual recovery and final words of wisdom give way to a mysterious conclusion as his parents vanish, leaving Azaro alone with the promise of a new world.

The core journey of Azaro and his family through poverty, politics, and the spirit world.

Strange women take Azaro to an island ruled by a pregnant goddess; he awakens and escapes in a canoe with a wounded woman.

A corrupt police officer takes the lost Azaro in, secretly planning to keep him as a replacement for his dead son.

Azaro witnesses police officers performing rituals of tribute and pledging corrupt oaths of allegiance to their superior.

The homecoming feast grows far beyond the family's means, and the aftermath leaves them in debt to brutal creditors.

Mum falls gravely ill, likely with malaria; Azaro runs to fetch Madame Koto, who provides a potion that begins her recovery.

Azaro realizes Madame Koto's bar is filled with spirit customers and steals her lucky fetish, burying it deep in the forest.

Outraged compound residents rush the politicians' van and set it on fire in retaliation for the tainted milk.

The Photographer gains international recognition when his pictures of the tainted milk riot are published in newspapers worldwide.

The landlord raises only the family's rent as punishment because Dad has refused to support his chosen political party.

Dad tells Azaro the myth of the King of the Road, a giant who devours people when they can no longer feed him.

Azaro has a sexual awakening while dancing with a woman during a raucous party at Madame Koto's bar.

Madame Koto's bar becomes the first establishment in the village to receive electricity, and she soon purchases her own car.

Dad defeats the Yellow Jaguar in a supernatural fight and later discovers that his opponent was the ghost of a dead boxer.

Azaro's spirit senses reveal that Madame Koto is pregnant with three abiku children who have no intention of being born normally.

While Dad sleeps on and the family grows hungry, the beggars make halting attempts to fulfill his civic wishes in the streets.

This pool traces the lesser-seen forces shaping Azaro's world, from his early encounter with a pregnant goddess on a spirit island and his captivity in a corrupt policeman's home to the political deceptions that begin dividing the compound. The homecoming feast's crushing debt, the Photographer's dangerous rise to international fame, and Mum's near-fatal illness reveal the grinding vulnerabilities of the family's life. Madame Koto's transformation accelerates as she gains electricity, purchases a car, and fully aligns with the Party of the Rich — each step drawing her further from the community she once nurtured. Dad's boxing exploits, particularly his ghostly fight with the Yellow Jaguar, reveal the supernatural stakes beneath his very human hunger for dignity and recognition. Azaro's discovery that Madame Koto carries three malevolent spirit children marks a chilling turning point in her spiritual corruption. As Dad sinks into his long dream-filled sleep, the beggars who followed him wander the streets without purpose, embodying the failure of his outsized ambitions.

Hidden corners of Azaro's world — from secret rituals to Madame Koto's transformation.

While walking home from Madame Koto's bar, Azaro becomes lost on a perfectly familiar path and encounters a double of himself in the woods.

Mum tells Azaro that his father was once a celebrated boxer before the family came to the unnamed city.

Azaro follows his wandering path into the city and discovers his father among the load-bearers, staggering under an enormous weight.

Dad returns home in a terrible state and beats Mum before suddenly apologizing and sleeping through the entire next day.

The Photographer shows Azaro a deeply disturbing photograph of a man hanging from a tree on another continent.

Azaro flees an abusive patron into the forest and witnesses workers building the road as the trees retreat from human habitation.

A storm floods the construction site, a sinkhole opens, and the white electrical foreman and all the workers are swallowed up.

A three-headed spirit confronts Azaro and warns that spirits with more heads will come for him if he refuses to leave the living world.

After recovering from his last great fight, Dad abandons boxing and obsessively buys books to pursue a career as a politician.

Dad's modest victory party is overrun by beggars and freeloaders until Madame Koto's drunken driver crashes her car into a wall.

Dad attempts to organize the beggars as civic workers and political supporters, but his plans collapse entirely into chaos and vandalism.

Madame Koto orders her thugs to beat the beggars out of the grand party while Azaro seizes the chance to free a trapped duiker.

The blind old man grips Ade, who collapses into an epileptic fit and delivers cryptic predictions about coups and coming wars.

Sitting in Dad's chair, Mum tells Azaro the story of a lost white man who gave her his blue sunglasses and became African.

Azaro dips into Dad's long sleep and sees him dreaming of a world free from poverty, corrupt landlords, and oppressive politicians.

This pool follows the pivotal discoveries and emotional ruptures that mark Azaro's coming of age, beginning with small moments of disorientation — getting lost on a familiar path and learning of his father's hidden past as a boxer — and building toward shattering revelations about poverty and power. Azaro's glimpse of his father laboring under a crushing load, and Dad's violent breakdown at home, expose the psychological wounds of a man slowly broken by deprivation. The Photographer's lynching photograph widens the lens to reveal Azaro's world as part of a global history of racial oppression. The brutal clash between nature and technological progress, embodied by the storm that swallows the electrical workers in a sinkhole, signals the limits of colonial-style development. Dad's transformation from boxer to would-be politician — and the collapse of his plans for the beggars — illustrate the recurring cycle of thwarted ambition. The pool closes with Mum's extraordinary story of the lost white man and Azaro's vision of his father's dream-world, setting the stage for the novel's hopeful but open-ended conclusion.

The revelations and turning points that change everything for Azaro and his family.