This novel turns many conventions on its head. The first and most obvious is the setting. Rather than the typical medieval setting of a fantasy novel, Marlon James aims to jettison this for a fictionalized, uncolonized sub-Saharan Africa. James sculpts his world well; African mythological creatures abound, traditional folklore beliefs and magic are given a reality in the novel, and the cultures in the world range from tribal to urban and stratified.

The main character, Tracker, kills his abusive father and leaves his home to go live with his uncles in a neighboring village where he learns that his father is actually his grandfather, and his real father is dead. He then leaves this village as well after declining to go through with a circumcision ritual to enter into manhood. (His tribe's belief is that when cutting off the foreskin you are cutting out the womanly part of you, and in females removing a clitoridectomy is cutting out the male portion).

There's a lot of rejection of heteronormativity right here in the outset. Any male-female relations that are presented are incestuous, polygynous, or abusive. For now it's understandable that Tracker would reject these societal structures given their disfunctions. Tracker then meets a shapeshifting leopard man and they both take a bunch of misshapen children called mingi to live with a maternal shaman. This motley gathering of outcasts is the closest Tracker gets to a functional family structure, but the village is attacked, and the children have to go live with a neighboring tribe that has a blood feud with Tracker, so Tracker can't stay there with them and leaves to travel the world.