<p>This is the first volume of a trilogy which marks the high point of outspokenness and originality of one of Norway&#39;s most controversial modern writers. Jens Bj&oslash;rneboe was an author and polemicist of fierce energy and deep conviction who throughout his career provoked and upset the establishment by his unrelenting attacks on its most sacred cows: a repressive school system a hypocritical Christianity an inhumane prison system power-seeking politicians corrupt police and depraved moral guardians - all concentrated in his particular <em>b&ecirc;te noire</em>: the authoritarian personality.</p><p>With this trilogy Bj&oslash;rneboe turned his attention to a more general problem: the evil inherent in the human race itself. Why his narrators ask despairingly does man behave so inhumanely to his fellow creatures? The first volume is set in a middle-European principality where the narrator is a servant of justice employed to brush gowns and fill inkwells and to be daily witness to injustice masquerading as a court of law. The experience sets him off on an odyssey through human experience and his own past asking what went wrong with mankind.</p>