It is 1950s Hungary; a country at the height of Stalinist repression with a populace reduced to silence and deception. An old man flees with his memories of the past in which he believes he can still find redemption, taking with him his grandson, Simon. For him, he invents a fantastic tapestry of stories, a family saga, a fabulous world of myths and legends.

His mother dead and his father condemned by the authorities as a traitor, Simon is sent to an institution where the inmates are sentenced to silence. Liberated by his grandfather's stories, Simon gives dark and passionate testimony to the alienation and treason that surrounds him. Finally he begins to understand how other kinds of family stories will end.