An omen that changes people, a story about how good and evil can happen at once, about the simple ones, who don't distinguish right from left, and about the complicated ones, who think they are chosen by God. This is a novel about fathers and clever daughters, who do not let the story die. A book where love comes uninvited, as it always has done, full of suspense, and our undying desire to find purpose in this life. Drawing on the Biblical story of Jonah, the author brings to life a whole village of characters as well as the monsters of the deep, invigorating our imagination in the process.

A young man is found lying unconscious on the outskirts of Bucharest. No one knows who he is and everyone has a different theory about how he got there. The stories of the various characters unfold, each closely interwoven with the next, and outlining the features of what ultimately turns out to be the most important and most powerful character of all: the city of Bucharest itself. The novel covers the last 13 days of 1897 and culminates in a beautiful tableau of the future as imagined by the different characters. We might, in fact, say that it is we who inhabit their future. And so too does Dan Cretu, alias Dan Kretzu, the present-day journalist hurled back in time by some mysterious process for just long enough to allow us a wonderful glimpse into a remote, almost forgotten world, but one still very much alive in our hearts.