Hugo Horiot is in love with wheels and all that cranks or turns. He is obsessed with the otherworldly language of pipes--they run, he imagines, from his family home to the center of the earth. He causes endless trouble at home and hates school. He muses: "I dream asleep, I dream awake"--but he dreams so hard he shuts out the world with reveries that are not just curious but dangerous and painful too. School is a prison he must escape, his teachers oppressors, and his classmates "a band of jolly torturers." This is the portrait of a boy who might happen to suffer from autism, but who is also a beautiful rebel inspired to blaze his own path through childhood to find an enduring sense of personal freedom.