How do you live and love when you don’t know who you are – or where you come from? George Psalmanazar decides to invent an identity so fantastical it dazzles everyone he meets in London in 1702.
In his supposed homeland of Formosa, George claims, the people are sun-worshipping cannibals who roam naked and communicate by singing. He says he was adopted by Jesuits there. Though his account contradicts everything previously reported by missionaries and travelers, everyone believes the fake Japanese man’s tales. Even Samuel Johnson – England’s own Goethe and a renowned salon wit – falls for the ruse and immediately takes George under his wing. George even makes it all the way to Oxford.
But what is life like when you constantly fear being exposed and attacked? Fortunately, there is Lucy, Johnson's daughter, who falls in love with George, even though she suspects that he is probably an impostor, but certainly a man with a dark secret...
