Sophie is a war orphan who becomes the most brilliant student in Rath's university class in Munich in the twenties. Her obsessive worship of him results in an affair between them, witnessed by Rath's friend and colleague Quinn, who is himself in love with Sophie. When Rath's wife Maya discovers the affair, Rath breaks it off, and Sophie nearly succeeds in killing herself. But she's rescued and brought to London by Quinn, and finds a new life there. Some years later, the Raths show up in London, fleeing from Germany, broke, and without prospects, and Rath himself has fallen into near suicidal despair. Maya goes to Sophie, her former rival, and asks her to please go and see her husband and try to help him resolve his feelings of remorse about their relationship. And Rath's daughter Hannah, just becoming a woman herself, watches all this complex nightmare of betrayal and self-deception unfold, gradually pieces together for herself a version of what actually happened in the past, and reaches some horrifying conclusions about the nature of reality and the limitations of human love. Five strong roles, a dark, often funny, tragic and powerful play which is a kind of dark mirror image of the lives of some famous and infamous twentieth century intellectuals.