At the end of the nineteenth century, two inexperienced Portuguese colonizers, with a vague intention of civilizing the colonies, disembark in a remote part of the Congo River in order to coordinate a trading post. As time goes by, they become increasingly demoralized by their inability to profit from the ivory trade. A mutual feeling of distrust and misunderstadings with the locals isolate them at the heart of the tropical jungle. Faced with each other, they begin a journey towards the abyss.

When a chinese merchant brings to a neighbourhood of Luanda a peculiar holy plastic figure of Our Lady, a mourning mother will seek peace, a committed barber starts a new cult and a stray kid will look for revenge for his lost friend.

One day, air conditioners in the Angolan capital Luanda start to mysteriously fall from buildings. When security guard Matacedo is told to get his overheating boss an air conditioning unit by the end of the day, he embarks on a mission that brings him into contact with the eccentric owner of an electronics store.

Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, poet and novelist, finds out that his father left papers in the Namib desert that would help him shed light on a mystery that occurred in 1923. Through his search, he embarks on an epic tale that goes from the turn of the 19th century to the end of the 20th, in the magnificent Angolan south.