In a provincial German city at the turn of the 20th century, a young boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father, and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with the son of one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich and marries the daughter. He and Katia have six children. In the novel Buddenbrooks, he writes about his own family. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the novella Death in Venice. When Katia spends six months in a sanatorium, he writes The Magic Mountain. He is the most succesful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. In 1933, the Manns flee Germany for Switzerland, France, and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton, New Jersey, and then in Los Angeles.