Sarajevo in September 1914. In a newspaper office, at the state bank, and in other official places, letters arrive with great delays, often only after years. But it is not the war that has disrupted the imperial and royal mail; rather, it is a lovesick postman who recently fell on the battlefield of the impending world war. The five major narratives, through which Dzevad Karahasan returns from the distant epochal scene of his magnum opus, The Consolation of the Night Sky, to the 20th century, deal with love and loss, progress and memory. Communism reaches the Bosnian province. In the small towns, surrounded by lonely, majestic landscapes, Karahasan's heroes sense that an era is dawning in which they no longer have a place. They resist - radical old-timers, defiant world.