Mgungu Yabba Mgungu is living happily on the South Sea island of New Burnt Norton with his three wives, one hundred pigs and assorted children, the last remaining members of the tribe of the Lesser Pimbas. Into this uncivilised land comes Maria Fishburn, strange and beautiful heiress, who decides to marry Mgungu and drag him back to New York City. From his first encounter with airline food and with rock star Kent Gable, who declares he was recently abducted by aliens, Mgungu is plunged into a world much more predatory than anything in the South Seas. Soon Mgungu is the toast of all Manhattan, meeting Parker Junius, unctuous curator of the Museum of Primitive Arts, talking philosophy with Sophie Tuckerman, deli owner, and meeting the illustrious Joey, of pizza parlour fame. It is swathed in a huge fur coat and with his new gold pen through his nose that Mgungu finally marries Maria. But then he falls in with a motley crew who come to threaten them both.