The setting is a Japanese POW camp near Singapore in early 1945. After years of Japanese neglect, near starvation diets, tropical diseases, and increasing hopelessness of liberation, British, Australian, and American prisoners are dropping like flies. A young and idealistic British pilot, Peter Marlowe, forms an unlikely friendship with a clever, street-smart enlisted American, 'the King'. While all the prisoners are literally walking skeletons suffering from every disease the tropics have to offer, the King inexplicably manages to eat, live, and dress normally. The King's secret? Trading.

However, in Changi trading is a zero-sum gain and absolutely forbidden. (In this strange world, the commanding British officers strictly enforce Japanese orders against their fellow inmates.) For one prisoner to eat, another will go hungry (ier). And the King is the master at not going hungry - looking out for No. 1. The king even outtrades his captors. Life is comparatively sweet for the King, albeit lonely. After all, the entire camp burns with covetous envy regarding the King.

Nearly, everyone depends on the King, though, to make a life-saving trade - a watch for a bowl of rice, $20 for an orange, etc. The King decides to take the unaffected Marlowe under his wing as a sort of junior partner. Marlowe is decidedly fascinated by this dynamic man (without a conscience?). And the King, in turn, remains mystified by Marlowe's idealism and self-sacrifice. The King lets Marlowe in on his adventures and his secrets, something the whole camp would like to know, too. The ever imaginative King comes up with a brilliant scheme to both make money AND get revenge on his camp enemies. And this perverted world comes to a surrealistic end with the closing of the Pacific War. Though some survive Changi, the experience will haunt the survivors for the rest of their lives. The question is who will survive.