In the late nineteenth century King Leopold II of Belgium proclaimed, 'I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.' The subsequent occupation of the Congo would come to attract a contingent of servants, merchants, and miscellaneous bourgeois driven by everything from insatiable greed to existential fear. From the intimate stories of these characters, many of whom pass through a luxury hotel in the middle of the jungle, emerges a greater narrative.