St Petersburg, Russia, 1866. Nihilist revolutionaries have taken to the streets and the rule of the Tsar is under threat. In a small flat, Fyodor Dostoyevsky grafts out a novel for an unscrupulous publisher; it isn't the novel he wants to write, but he is under contract, so he works. All the time, though, he is haunted by a story from his past—that of a parricide, a young man who kills his father. As the characters in his imagination take shape around him, he finds himself forced to choose between rebellion and repression, authority and chaos, passion and love