Paul Street Boys sculpture in Budapest, depicting the einstand, a bullying scene from the novel.

The novel is about schoolboys in the Józsefváros neighbourhood of Budapest and set in 1889. The Paul Street Boys spend their free time at the grund, an empty lot that they regard as their “Fatherland”.The story has two main protagonists, János Boka (the honourable leader of the Paul Street Boys) and Ernő Nemecsek (the smallest member of the group).

When the “Redshirts”—another gang of boys, led by Feri Áts, who gather at the nearby botanical gardens—attempt to take over the grund, the Paul Street Boys are forced to defend themselves in military fashion.

Although the Paul Street Boys win the war, and little Nemecsek repeatedly demonstrates that his bravery and loyalty surpasses his size, the book ends in tragedy: Nemecsek dies of the pneumonia that he caught in the conflict. At the very end of the book, Boka also learns that a tenement building will soon be erected on the grund lot, meaning that the boys’ heroic struggle to defend it and Nemecsek’s sacrifice was in vain.