Drifting on a sailing boat off the Canary Islands, four British gentlemen take turns reading a manuscript that they find inside a copper cylinder discovered floating in the Atlantic Ocean. The manuscript recounts Adam More's adventures after being lost at sea during an Antarctic voyage in 1844 and his life with the Kosekin, a lost civilisation living at the South Pole. The values of the Kosekin are opposed to the civilized normuthey love death, abjection, and poverty. Their society may be well suited to their particular evolution, but it is profoundly disconcerting to the narrator, and it is...