The twentieth century

The story opens in the spring of 1952 as Hélène Colobry, niece of mega-banker Raphael Ponto, has just graduated from a private provincial school and needs to find a career. This highly original futuristic fantasy is a cross between "The Jetsons" and the novels of Charles Dickens: it focuses on the daily life of a bourgeois family living in the technology-driven world of tomorrow—where trips to the market are made by aircar and where women argue politics with their husbands via videophone.