With this novel, the so-called The first trilogy of the Tartu cycle (it was preceded by "Jäälätte" and "Emajõgi"). On the one hand, it continues the story of a student friendship in the 1930s. On the other hand, the author's gaze reaches further ahead, to the future unknown for his heroes - to the war years, and in the last third of the novel, the writer even allows his hero Benno Maran to stay on a semi-dreamlike trip in Tartu of the 1950s, where Benno is accompanied by young students, on this occasion already the children of his former comrades-in-arms