Critics have compared the book to Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks" and works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The novel, Zabuzhko's third, is a modern multigenerational saga which covers the years 1940 to 2004, framed as investigations by a journalist, Daryna Hoshchynska, of historical events in western Ukraine including the Holodomor, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and later political changes, ending just before the Orange Revolution.