The book originated as a series of faxes from European comics agent Ervin Rustemagić during the Serbian siege of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Rustemagić and his family, whose home and possessions in the suburb of Dobrinja were destroyed, spent one-and-a-half years trapped in Sarajevo, communicating with the outside world via fax when they could.

With the beginning of the Bosnian War in early 1992, Ervin Rustemagić, his wife Edina, and children Maja and Edvin have just returned to their home in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilidža after an extended trip to the Netherlands.

With he and his family spending every day terrified of the shelling, and often hiding in their basement to avoid the bombs, Rustemagić has to debate the safety of taking his son to the hospital to deal with his high fever.

In June 1992, Ervin tries to gain permission to leave the country from the French consulate; each time he visits their offices he must drive a dangerous route from Dobrinja to Sarajevo in his Opel Kadett, protected from live fire only by metal plates attached to the car and piles of comic books, meant to absorb the force of a bullet.

Some months later, in October 1992, the family moves locations to the Sarajevo Holiday Inn, at that point mostly occupied by foreign journalists and constantly under fire.