Meet Maqil
- also known as Mike, Mehmet, Mikhail & Miguel
- a chancer & charlatan. A criminally clever man who tells a good tale, trading on his charm & good looks, reinventing himself with a new identity & nationality in each successive country he makes his home, abandoning wives & children & careers in the process. He`s a compulsive gambler
- driven to lose at least as much as he gains, in games of chance, & in life. A damaged man in search of himself. From the day he was delivered in Lahore, Pakistan, alongside his stillborn twin, he proved he was a born survivor. He has been a master of flying escapes, from Cairo to Paris, from London to Hong Kong, humbled by love, outliving his peers, & ending up old & alone in a budget hotel in Biarritz some eighty years later. His chequered history is catching up with him: his tracks have been uncovered & his latest wife, his children, his creditors & former business associates, all want to pin him down. But even at the end, Maqil just can`t resist trying it on; he`s still playing his game, & the game won`t be over until it`s been won.