One bitterly cold winter in the 1970s, Leonid Tsypkins obsession with Dostoyevsky leads him to Leningrad by train, so that he can see for himself where his hero died. As the train makes its way across Russia, a journal inspires Tsypkin to conjure up the summer of 1867, when Dosteyevsky and his young wife Anna travelled across Europe to Baden-Baden. The destructive demons that beset Dostoyevsky in his later life were in full force at this time, and man and wife battled for their very souls. Yet, in Tsypkins hands, this elegy to the great Russian writer becomes a glorious and unforgettable love story.