Poland in the summer of I939: the threat of war hangs in the air like a storm cloud over the picturesque countryside. Fifteen-year-old Krzys, having his first love affair, bids a wistful farewell to his childhood memories of the country summers: Sunday afternoons in his grandmother's sun-soaked living room, pony riding with the story-telling stableboy, summer outings in the country. He has a vague premonition that the Poland of his childhood will soon be a thing of the past. Thus the end of Krzys' childhood and the end of a Polish era approach, and Krzys just manages to catch their shadow. This novel, which was published in Poland for the first time in I976, is full of delicate poetry and wistful, nostalgic pictures reminiscent of scenarios by Thomas Mann.