The most recent rock songs thundered as good news throughout downtown when the ostentatious car snaked slowly down the streets, windows rolled down. Behind the wheel, this good-looking guy in the latest fashion and with the newest hairstyle. Most believed he was American; Icelanders who looked like this did not exist.  

Post-war Iceland is at this odd crossroad between past and present. It is still the old agricultural society but when American soldiers and a new lifestyle pours into the country, the old way of life is threatened.  

The novel depicts a hotchpotch of people that move into the barracks the Allies built during the war and which now stand empty, the war having ended. It is not the best children in town that live here, but a disparate crowd that drag their small and large problems with them. The story twirls around Lina and Tommy, the oldest generation in a household full of children, grandchildren and other children. They have no money, but big hearts and love creates a wide, inviting room. When they build the Old House in the middle of the barrack neighbourhood, it becomes a natural meeting place for relatives, friends and the restless. Here, a football club is founded, Lina predicts how the future will turn, trysts of every imaginable kind take place and parties of young hoods are held. Accompanying it all are the usual troubles that arises where people live.  

A cheerful portrait of people living on the threshold between two eras. They roam between the safety of the old world and hypnotising power of the new.  

The narrator sympathises with the poor folk in the barracks. Kárason surely intends to depict this era and these people with respect, for this is a part of himself, his country and his past.  

The colophon says: “The story is no lie although events and people are invented, creatures of the imagination.”