Two housewives discuss philosophical themes (actually an updated dialogue between Plato and Socrates) while doing the house work. The husband of one of them rehearses his part in a theatrical play, reading a 20th century philosophical text about totalitarianism.

Prague, 1920. Milena's father wants her to follow in his footsteps and be one of the first female doctors in Czechoslovakia, but she is determined to be a writer. She elopes to Vienna with the Jewish music critic Ernst Pollak, and starts a correspondence with Franz Kafka. She leaves Pollak and returns to Prague with her father, where she befriends and translates Kafka. As a journalist, Milena covers the 1923 Ruhr worker's strike and meets the communist architect Jaromir.