Summer, 1867: The newlywed Dostoevsky and his young wife Anna - his one-time secretary - are travelling to the German spa resort of Baden-Baden on honeymoon. Their love is ecstatic, yet the author is plagued by demons: haunted by his crimes and punishments, consumed by fevers of jealousy, gambling to avoid mounting debts and shaken by epileptic fits. Winter, 1970s: Our Jewish narrator embarks on a pilgrimage from Moscow to Leningrad to trace the footsteps of his literary hero. As the train travels across the Soviet Union's bleak expanses, he immerses himself in Anna's travel journal: and their journeys - past and present, real and imagined - soon become entwined.