The novel, which covers 230 medium-sized pages, monitors a wide range of societal ills, most notably political corruption, the common-law marriage between politics and economics, the low moral standard in society, and the encroachment of those with influence and power.
Through its various characters and their constant conflicts, the novel embodies the life cycle of an Egyptian person, in a fictitious village called "Meet Sophia," which is a microcosm of rural society in Egypt. In it, the author paints a dark picture of the corrupt parliamentarian who abuses his position, and the arrogant mayor who leans on his influence. The husband of his daughter, the veteran advisor, wreaks havoc, and the son of the wealthy man, who is struggling to survive, is involved in an unequal conflict. Some of the novel's characters may not be new to anything, but Nassar's narrative uses these characters with a new plot, a plot in which you find yourself condemning the criminal, but you cannot help but To sympathize with him at the same time, and thus the novel, over its forty years - the period of the novel's events - is considered a poem of lament for justice, the justice that is absent from the events from the first lines, and which we keep searching for with bated breath, hoping to recognize it, until we reach the final word.