A retired, senile bank clerk confined to his basement apartment, Tomas Jonsson decides that, since memoirs are all the rage, he's going to write his own - a sure bestseller - that will also right the wrongs of contemporary Icelandic society. Egoistic, cranky, and digressive, Tomas blasts away while relating pick-up techniques, meditations on chamber pot use, ways to assign monetary value to noise pollution, and much more. His rants parody and subvert the idea of the memoir - something that's as relevant today in our memoir-obsessed society as it was when the novel was first published.