Expanded from a novella, 'Seth',[1] the novel chronicles the efforts of the British-educated Emperor Seth, assisted by a fellow Oxford University graduate, Basil Seal, to modernise his Empire, the fictional African island of Azania, located in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Africa.

After winning a civil war against his late father Seyid (who is unfortunately eaten by his own soldiers), Seth, Oxford-educated emperor of the fictional nation of Azania, makes it his goal to modernise his country.

He recruits Basil Seal, a shiftless college friend and heir to an English political family in the country after stealing his mother’s jewellery to pay for his ticket, to preside over the newly established Ministry of Modernization, with the help of Krikor Yokoumian, a successful Armenian shopkeeper and fixer.

Connolly was a former Irish game-warden who had taken a local wife, whom he refers to as "Black Bitch", as the Duke & Duchess of Ukaka; the Minister of the Interior Viscount Boaz, and the Earl of Ngumo; the representatives of the British diplomatic corps, interested only in the legation garden and gossip from home at the expense of any interest in local affairs, headed by a failed career diplomat Sir Samson Courteney; Monsieur Ballon, the French freemason consul, determined that all actions on the part of the British are in fact coded pieces of a great master plan and his wife, generally believed to be having an affair with General Connolly after French agents overhear a game of consequences at a party; and two members of the RSPCA, Dame Mildred Porch and Miss Sarah Tin, who the Azanians believe are there to assist in creating more efficient ways to be cruel to animals.

After a period of rapid but haphazard modernisation, including renaming the street the Anglican Cathedral is on "Place Marie Stopes", Emperor Seth launches his own currency.