The unnamed narrator of the `book of words' has a dark past and with these words - carefully chosen and dropped like a trail through a forest - the reader is compelled to tread with her the uncertain and spiky terrain of memory. First there is her childhood. She was raised by a wet nurse, who took the place that should have been filled by her ever-distant mother. Then her school days: a piano teacher, a gardener, and her friend Anna, whose mind is filled with violent fantasies. And, all the while in the background, her father - a man full of knowledge and an idealized hero, until she realizes that the world she has grown up in has begun to grind to a halt. Public transport is stopped, businesses are closed, and figures from her childhood disappear one after another - the regime is tightening its grip and it seems that her father is right at its centre.
