"DJ Darky has created the perfect beat. But his sonic Mona Lisa needs one last touch of genius, and only one man can provide it: Charles Stone, an avant garde jazzman nicknamed the Schwa because his sound, like the indeterminate vowel, is unstressed, upside down, and backward." There's only one problem: nobody knows where the reclusive Schwa is hiding out. This is, until a porn producer hands Darky the most beautiful, transformative score he's ever heard. The return address is simply "Slumberland Bar, Berlin." Convinced the music couldn't have been created by anyone but the Schwa, Darky sets off to Germany to search of his artistic - and spiritual - other. Before long, he loses himself in the dreamy streets of Berlin in the period surrounding the fall of the Wall, ruminating about race, sex, love, Teutonic gods, the prevent defense, and the rise and fall of the black man, while trying to locate the Schwa and make sense of the changing world around him.