Brändö (Finnish: Kulosaari) is a small island within the city limits of Helsinki, established in 1907 by wealthy Swedish-speaking merchant families as a villa suburb modeled after English garden cities. It was designed for educated Swedish-speaking individuals from good families and without financial worries, as noted in Henrik Tikkanen's novel. In true Finnish-Swedish spirit, they isolated themselves in a fortress, shutting out the increasingly unpleasant reality. Here, the first-person narrator, who is identical to the author, grows up; the father is an architect, the mother is the daughter of a candy manufacturer, and the grandfather is a professor of art history. The novel tells a chilling story about premature death, disaster, immorality, and spirits, as revealed by the first sentence of the book.