Per Olov Enquist himself calls this novel a “love story”. A description that can seem a little confusing, since the book is about life without love and existence in the most awful conditions imagined. Pasqual Pinon is a monster. He was born with two heads. When the reader is first introduced to him, he is hidden away in a mine somewhere in Mexico. From his head another head has grown – a woman’s head. He carries it as if it was a miner’s flashlight and has wrapped rags around it. A man who runs a circus hears the story of this unique human being. He sees the possibilities in Pasqual and soon has the poor fellow travelling with him in his shows together with other unusual phenomena.