The action takes place in a small village in Siberia up in the Taiga where the family members of White Russians and of political prisoners are interned: Estonians, Korean, Poles, Ukrainians, all are persecuted by the Stalin government and under the constant threat of the NKVD, which can barge into someone’s house at anytime and dramatically change his life.

The narrator, Petia is Polish. In 1939 when Poland was shared between Hitler and Stalin, his father was made prisoner by the Russians and sent to a working camp. Petia lives with his Jewish mother who, because of her exceptional beauty and strong personality is able to help and save people from persecution or death.

With little chapters that can be read as short stories, the author recounts the daily life in the camp, its moments of happiness and sadness, the will to survive and the strange fascination with the omnipresent death. Indeed, Petia must cope with the successive disappearances of his grandfather, father, grandmother and mother’s rescuer, all the while desperately trying to cheat death himself.