Música acuática

The year is 1795. George III begins to lose his sanity within the halls of Windsor, Goya retreats into deafness, and Beethoven premieres his second piano concerto in Vienna. Meanwhile, in Scotland, an inexperienced young doctor named Mungo Park sets sail for Africa, obsessed with charting the course of the mysterious Niger River. A visionary hero, he is accompanied by a Mandinka slave—versed in Latin and Greek—with whom he must evade emirs intent on gouging out their eyes, endure virulent fevers, and flee African kings who pass judgment amidst bizarre rituals. Along his journey, he crosses paths with the rogue Ned Rise—pickpocket, tavern singer, brothel poet, grave robber, and tormented soul. One seeks glory at the source of the Niger; the other seeks merely to survive one more night without being killed, deported, or accidentally embalmed. Together, on a journey as absurd as it is epic, they traverse the mire of civilization, traveling from the foul docks of Georgian London to the inscrutable reaches of the African interior, where maps begin to lie.