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My uncle lived in the attic of our house and rarely left his room, which I, due to some domestic injustice, did not have access to. Strange smells, the gurgling of boiling liquid and the sound of a crackling fire would sometimes seep in from there, and bluish or pink smoke would sometimes seep through the crack at the bottom of the door, so that from the outside, his room looked like a wizard's lair or a witch's lair. When I asked what was going on in my uncle's room, everyone would just put their finger to their mouth as if it was the biggest secret that was not even worth mentioning. The collection of poisons from the novel's title was in my uncle's room, and the boy who wanted to solve the secret was his nephew Vladimir, whose life story we follow from birth to old age in a nursing home. Vladimir was born into a family consisting of an unenthusiastic father, a domineering grandmother, a mother with nymphomaniac needs, and an uncle, a pharmacist specializing in toxic substances. Growing up in that family will forever determine Vladimir's life and destiny, which will become increasingly complicated and, for some, tragic, when the boy and later the man begins to reach for the contents of the bottles from his uncle's room. Unusual and humorous, the novel is both a crime story and a surprising historical novel that brings our immediate history to life in a masterly told way, as Goran Tribuson has been doing for years.