Sam Kandy, born in 1899 in a poor village in the heart of Ceylon, resolves to make his own luck amongst the cheats and chancers of the world. When twenty years reckoning with the streets of Colombo, the docks of Sydney and the brothels of Singapore lead Sam back to Ceylon, he coldly pursues a life of wealth, prestige, and power.

Families are torn apart, fortunes are made and lost, and old ways collide with modernity's new machines and money and desires. Ambition, reinvention, tradition and family each demand an answer: what does it cost a man to rewrite his history?