The
story-teller, who occupies an ambivalent position – one moment an
omniscient observer, the next moment an unnamed character in the story –
talks ironically and humorously about a carefree world which is not
aware of the oncoming cataclysm that will be caused by the outbreak of
Nazism in Germany. The novel conjures up the atmosphere of Belgrade
before World War II, and the story centers mostly around the small
Kalmyk population which settled there together with the Russians who
fled in the face of the October Revolution. At its core, there is an
auto-ironic portrait of a not-so-popular authoress, who compensates for
her want of productivity with a fashionable life in the Yugoslav
capital, participating in local scandals and running her own small
detective investigation.