Contemporary Russia. Nadya gives up her dream of becoming a champion figure skater when she is hospitalized with an injury. But then she meets Sasha, a hockey player, who decides to teach her to believe in herself and her dream again.

A 40-year-old writer returns to his family house where he was raised and that he escaped after half a lifetime - to face his brother who stayed instead, inherited their family bakery and married the woman who they both loved.

In 1976 a famous American writer Nathan Zuckerman is challenged by Czech immigrant Sisovsky who implores him to retrieve valuable manuscripts from communist Czechoslovakia. The writer accepts this dangerous mission, where his every step is observed by secret police. Once in Prague, he meets Sisovsky‘s flamboyant and wild ex-wife Olga who is in possession of the manuscripts. The evolving relationship between the hot-headed Olga and Nathan is a confrontation between two worlds - the repressed East and free West. But, Olga won‘t give up the manuscripts to Nathan so easily…