sentences:  The novel is a critic to moral environment of the polish intelligentsia of the time, exposing them as servile and subservient to the regime.The book is written in the form of a "roman à clef", which is a novel with fictional characters that can be easily identified as counterparts of real life people, in this case, names from the polish cultural scene from the time.Tyrmand had aspirations of the book to become his magnum opus, but the goverment didn't allow its publication, and despite eventually being published in Paris, the book was mostly unnoticed on its time.