The hero of Fischer's tale is a bowl that comes into the possession of a young, lovelorn London art appraiser named Rosa. Rosa's bowl is no ordinary piece of clay, however: it is a ceramic sage, an urn of uncommon erudition that has witnessed all of history's major convulsions - revolutions, famines, massacres, wars - and has survived more than four hundred breakages and three thousand thefts.

Equipped with an unerring memory and the ability to impart wisdom to its hapless custodian, the bowl observes and narrates the invasion and gradual colonization of Rosa's tiny apartment by an uninvited houseguest: the sex-addicted kleptomaniac Nikki.

Inhabiting the fringes of Fischer's kinky, dystopic universe are Tabitha, a newspaper sob-sister whom Rosa kidnaps and confines in a backyard well, demanding romantic advice in lieu of ransom, and the indestructible Lump, a fierce but affectionate Amazon whose sole mission is to rescue Nikki from her many libidinous admirers.