Plot

Mother (Lily), son (Malín) and stepfather, and a poor relation between the latter two. Lily always refused to tell who was Malín's real father. But Malín gradually uncovered the secret. Lily and Ivan were very much in love but never had any opportunity to sleep together. After Ivan was drafted Lily disappeared. She was raped by the son of a communist official and became pregnant. The People's Tribunal decided that the rapist and the raped should marry. To avoid the shame of being an unmarried mother Lily resigned to her fate. But the husband did not even attend the wedding ceremony and feast. After this insult Lily refused to sleep with him. Then he sent her in a concentration camp. She witnessed a prisoner being tortured to death. Later she was confined to a mental hospital. But she made it clear to a young doctor that she would do anything for him if he helped her out. He accepted the deal. But Lily's freedom might not have lasted long if she had posed as the respectable married woman she was. Though the price of concealing it was also heavy. If she took a real job her identity would be disclosed. She could only take poorly paid homework. She had to be glad that any man would accept her. And she could never tell the truth to her son.—Max Scharnberg, Stockholm, Sweden

It's 1980. Malin is fatherless, angry, and in trouble. At 20, he's spent a year in jail for assaulting a lover of Lily, his mother. In her desk he finds a soldier's photograph and assumes he's found his father. He confronts the man, now a teacher, and gets nowhere. At home again, he mocks his mother. Finally, she tells him her grim story, from the year before his birth. We see a people's court, where Lily's parents seek justice for their grandchild to be. We follow Lily to a prison camp, to the city where she's told to inform on the only person who's been kind, to an asylum, and finally to her current poverty and loneliness. How will Malin respond to these revelations?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>