Hoeg gives us a very different account of the twentieth century, which in Denmark encompasses the transition from a medieval society to a modern welfare state with its accompanying cultural revolutions.

The cast includes a count who builds a wall around his estate and stops all his clocks to prevent the passage of time; an old lady who presides over a powerful newspaper dynasty and predicts the future accurately in print without ever learning to read and write; and Adonis Jensen, who causes his vagabond parents great sorrow through his inability to steal.