It all starts with crazy Manda biting the mailman and being euthanized in the hospital by an overdose doctor. She is ninety-seven years old and has lived in Dubrovnik for almost a century. Little by little, the author unravels her life, goes back, and gradually we experience the story of the woman and her hometown of Dubrovnik.

This novel encompasses nearly all of Yugoslavia's tumultuous twentieth century, from the decline of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires through two world wars, the rise and fall of communism, and the breakup of the nation,