To start off the new century, rock sensation Ryder fakes his own death and checks into a sanitarium. Three weeks later, he takes off for San Francisco, where his first sight is a mangrove swamp that's the new northern tip of the Amazon rain forest. The surreal jungle is more appealing to Ryder than the media-overloaded rock world, and the fractal wilderness draws Ryder to it in search of such exotic flora and fauna as his identity, the true nature of sound and light, and that elusive bloom called happiness. Kamikaze L'Amour is a fantastic melange, an experimental symphony resonating in a Ballardian landscape through which sleepwalkers, hustlers, refugees, and soldiers search for meaning in an America transformed into a synesthetic dream.