A roman à clef, it details the life of Joe Necchi, a heroin addict and writer, who is living and working on a scow on the Hudson River in New York.

The book alternates between Necchi/Trocchi's attempts to score and flashbacks to his experiences as a child in Glasgow, and later as a young man in London and Paris.

On occasion it can descend into ranting about the hypocrisy and stupidity of drug prohibition and the general inequities of the world.

In April 1964 the UK edition went to trial for obscenity, with six defense witnesses, including author Kenneth Allsop, testifying to its literary value.

The case is notable in that the court's judgement was the first in the UK to condemn a book for obscenity not for sexual content but for "the lifestyle it advocated.