The book isn't really about me. It is about Africa, about my family, about the mishaps and calamities and freakish occurrences in which I was so often an unwitting pivot or accidental catalyst. It is about a life - my own - where I have figured largely as a baffled spectator. Others meet danger with cunning and fortitude; I overcame it through a mixture of blind luck and not falling over too often. My childhood passed in a haze of delirium familiar to me from several intriguing diseases, including the one which provides the book's title.