The novel follows its heroes, who come to settle and live on an island in the Ionian Sea during the interwar period, bringing with them experiences from their lost homelands in Pontus, industrial England, the France of the Popular Front, and civil war Spain.
The newcomers mingle with the local society of the island, particularly with two families of well-off merchants, people who appreciate education and literature. Through these new faces, the developments of European science and new social ideas reach Niko, Loukas, and Giorgaki, young high school students, and from there they spread to the young craftsmen and apprentices in the commerce of the country.
From that point on, coincidences disrupt the stagnation imposed by the Metaxas dictatorship. The curiosity of the young heroes of the novel about Einstein's theories encounters the inadequacy of their professor and—accompanied by the ideological bias of fascist admirers—leads to events that shake the country, the entire island, and even the Royal Gendarmerie.
However, the small community of the island has a powerful weapon: humor and satire. What Arsinoe, with her uneducated wisdom, elevated to a transcendent being: in the "Gioconda" of Arsinoe. The "Gioconda," therefore, takes on the task of defeating the Metaxas tyranny with the march "Tablo-Tivlo Obriaki" composed by the children of the neighborhood.
But the "Gioconda" is not alone. She is accompanied by Roubina, who besides being the abbess of the Monastery of the Holy Virgin General of Victory, is also an astronomer, with her own telescope in the tower of the monastery she leads. Moody and authoritarian, extremely emotional and ingenious, she follows modern developments in science. With her gaze fixed on the future, she wants to salvage her medieval family history. Through diplomacy, threats, and pleas, she tries to convince Helen, her French niece, to investigate their ancestors' contributions to astronomy, following the evolution of ideas from Copernicus's heliocentric system to the theory of the Big Bang and the expanding Universe. Meanwhile, she keeps an eye on protecting her from the womanizer Michanodialos, who follows Helen to enlighten him about new quantum ideas but ends up falling in love with her.
However, the fascist underground wants to take revenge for the fiasco it suffered from the children and targets Niko. The mad, bloodthirsty Nadalés of Tentesco and his henchmen set an ambush to scar (fraise) the face of the young man, but Michanodialos and the prince of gambling and human trafficking, Nionios Bontis, intervene and disrupt their plans. From then on, the "Gioconda" and Arsinoe herself step in to solve the issues that arise in a tragicomic way.
We watch the heroes soar in the transcendent ethers of science and philosophy, and then swim in the waves of interwar history that sweeps them into the horror of the impending war, with only the unquenchable laughter of the "Gioconda" as consolation.
