Sinan returns from his studies in the city of Çanakkale to his parents' home in the small rural town of Çan. He hopes to publish a book of essays and short stories (or what he describes as a "quirky auto-fiction meta-novel"). But his teacher father Idris is an addictive gambler, so much so that his mother and sister have become reluctantly accustomed to making do without food or electricity. So Sinan, with his writing dreams, worrying that he will be reduced, after army service, to teaching in the remote East, wanders around town, visiting his grandparents, encountering old friends, all the while looking for funding for his book.