It is Paris, 1815. An extraordinarily shaped South African girl known as the Hottentot Venus, dressed only in feathers and beads, swings from a crystal chandelier in the duchess of Berry s ballroom. Below her, the audience shouts insults and pornographic obscenities. Among these spectators is Napoleon s physician and the most famous naturalist in Europe, the Baron George Cuvier, whose encounter with her will inspire a theory of race that will change European science forever.
Evoking the grand tradition of such monster tales as Frankenstein and The Hunchback of Notre...