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 fath...