In Empire, Kracht tells the true story of August Engelhardt, a remarkable and noteworthy outsider who, after training as a pharmacist's assistant and being influenced by the Lebensreformbewegung (holistic renewal of life) movement, suddenly uprooted himself at the beginning of the 20th century and set out for the German Pacific colonies. There, in the so-called protectorate lands of German New Guinea, he founded the Solar Order: a quasi-religious community that aimed to realize the ideals of nudism and vegetarianism on a new basis - no longer limited by petty-bourgeois conventions. . . Engelhardt acquired a coconut plantation on the island of Kabakon and devoted himself entirely - without concern for economic success or even minimal profit - to the theoretical development and practical implementation of the doctrine of cocophagia. The 'solar man-cocophagus', free from concerns about clothing, housing and food, focuses exclusively on the coconut palm fruit, which ripens closer to the sun than all other fruits, and can ultimately lead a person who feeds only on it (and therefore on sunlight) to a state of immortality, that is, make him godlike.