Kwasi Edward Michael Dankwa--Eddie Signwriter to his clients--is a twenty-year-old painter of murals and billboards in the city of Accra, Ghana, who is buffeted by forces beyond his control and understanding as he is swept up by the passions and machinations of others. Struggling with a forbidden relationship, banished from school, held responsible for the death of a notable woman in the community, Eddie flees overland to Senegal and then, illegally, to France, determined to find a new life for himself among the immigrant communities of Paris.