"The strange story of a man whose mind lives 10,000 years, finally bringing him to earth as a convicted murderer in the year 1933. Thumbs Martin cannot die! He lives on - backwards! - through endless centuries, his life protected by the curse that kills him. He lives, loves, suffers and dies, again and again, his body meanwhile lying broken and helpless on a hospital bed. Follow Thumbs Martin [with thumbs as long as hands] from lost Atlantis, through palaeozoic ooze, through age after age of a changing world, to a court room in the United States of America."