A young Englishman is sent to the jungles of Sarawak, a British colony, to work in the Iban society during the 1930s. There, the officer meets a beautiful native, assigned to be his "sleeping dictionary": to live and sleep with him, teaching him the language and habits of the locals. Their tutoring sessions become a passionate bonding of forbidden love and it's not long before their romance is torn apart by war, as the British troops and the tutor's tribe become trapped in battle.