This is the million-copy international bestseller. In the second volume of the trilogy about Jonas Wergeland, Jan Kjaerstad's narrative enmeshes the reader more and more closely not only in the life of one man, but also in that of an entire nation and its culture in the latter half of the twentieth century. Jonas Wergeland has been convicted of the murder of his wife Margrete. What brought Norway's darling to this end? A professor has been set the task of writing a biography of the once celebrated, now notorious, television personality; in doing so he hopes to solve the riddle of Jonas Wergeland's success and downfall. But the sheer volume of material on his subject is so daunting that the professor finds himself completely bogged down, at a loss as how to proceed, until the evening when a mysterious stranger knocks on his door and offers to tell him stories which will help him unravel the strands of Wergeland's life.