The turn of the 19th to the 20th century. The balance of power in Europe is beginning to falter. Two boys, worlds apart, come of age in this unsettled time: David Rosendahl, son of one of Berlin's most modern meat producers; and Martin, a foundling raised by monks, later subjected to suffering under the tyranny of his adoptive father, Franz Kreidler. Neither yet foresees how their paths—and their destinies—will converge upon the battlefields of the First World War. But that primal catastrophe is only the prelude to the social and political upheavals that, from the 1920s onward, will inexorably lead toward the next abyss.