Five men and two women become victims of a shipwreck and find themselves on a desert island inhabited by blind birds and giant lizards. Deprived of water, food and hope for salvation, the heroes are forced to confront not only the approaching death, but also their own past, from which they tried to escape and which now haunts them in dreams and hallucinations, almost indistinguishable from reality. Tracing the path that each of them will choose in the face of death, illuminating the darkest corners of their souls, Stig Dagerman (1923-1954) explores the nature of guilt, fear and loneliness. The novel, written in just two weeks in the summer of 1946, became a manifesto of Swedish modernism and turned the author into a cult writer.