Bastien, dix ans, est un passionné de romans d'aventures. Un jour, il dérobe un ouvrage merveilleux peuplé d'extraordinaires créatures. Il s'enfonce fébrilement dans l'univers fantastique de ce livre qui le fascine.

Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.