A gripping portrayal of a totalitarian society in all its irrationality, absurdity and implacability, simultaneously provoking laughter and shuddering in the reader.
Home to nine hot springs, Verhovina used to be rich in natural beauty, yet it has become a wasteland, with only a few dozen inhabitants left. Trains to Verhovina are scarce; the timetable has been cancelled. One day, even the birds disappeared from the region.
The reader arrives in Ádám Bodor's world on the periphery of civilisation, at the break of dawn. Adam, the foster son of Brigadier Anatol Korkodus, is waiting at the dilapidated railway station for a boy who is arriving from a reform school. Soon afterwards, Korkodus is arrested, for unfathomable reasons. Yet this decaying and sinister world is not devoid of a certain joie de vivre: people eat gourmet dishes, point out their interlocutors' hidden motives with incredibly dark humour, and revel in the region's stunning natural beauty.