Taxandria

An eleven-year-old boy, Jan arrives at a rundown seaside hotel with his tutor, Mr. Bonze. His high spirits stand in marked contrast to the doom-and-gloom cynicism of the grown-ups. Avoid the lighthouse keeper they tell him. He's a weirdo and he eats seagulls for breakfast. As soon as he can, of course, Jan makes straight for the lighthouse. Karol, the keeper, turns out to be a delightful man, a refugee from a place where progress was outlawed and technology banned. It was, he says, destroyed in a great cataclysm ...