Catherine Therouenne

The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.

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.

In the 15th century, the ship carrying twins Viola and Sebastian is shipwrecked. Viola washes ashore in Illyria, believing herself to be the sole survivor. To better defend herself against the pitfalls of life, she disguises herself as a man and enters the court of Duke Orsino as a page named Cesario...