The story of Ailu's summer, which he spends on an island with his trumpet and hedgehog for company while his father is at work. His ingenuity is put to the test when lonely Ailu tries to find things to do and entertain himself.
“The details of the young actor’s face – his eyes, eyebrows, earlobe, chin, etc. – are set opposite the old buildings in the market quarter of Athens, where every street is named after a classic ancient Greek playwrite.
Set in Hamburg's “Hell's Kitchen,” a waterfront milieu of gangsters, pimps, dealers and prostitutes, the story follows the attempts of an ex-seaman first to insinuate himself into the scene, and then to extricate himself from it.
The story, told partly in flashback to 1968, concerns a clique of English public schoolboys who bully and humiliate an unpopular younger pupil (Cox) who is 'bad at games'.