A century of life in the provincial landscape of an all-but-forgotten Eastern European country ...a doctor performs a small miracle with the help of cigar smoke. A young soldier performs heroics in his lovemaking. A likeable beggar is punished for disturbing a rural household. A deaf man awakens to discover a snake has slithered down his throat. A tailor is imprisoned due to the wit for which he has long been admired. A poacher is eventually victimized by the iron he has long used for killing...the simple yet sometimes extraordinary lives of people whose emotions assemble a century, the whole of a country. From the innocence of the past to the horrors of World War II to the bittersweet promises of a new regime: tales of charm, adventure, irony, eccentricity, love and death, joy and sadness. Tales against the beauty of a landscape that remains the same, even if it seems that the country itself may have never existed.