In a provincial German city at the turn of the 20th century, a young boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative, conventional father and a Brazilian mother, exotic and unpredictable. Mann, who will never fit in, hides both his artistic aspirations and his homosexual desires from his father, and his sexuality from everyone. He longs for a charismatic, rich, cultured young Jewish man, and marries his twin sister. He aches for a boy he sees on a beach in Venice and writes a novel about him. He is the most successful novelist of his time, and an extraordinarily complex and demanding husband and father. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of both Bohemianism and the anti-Nazi movement. share lovers. Two daughters marry famous writers themselves.