Eighty years ago, Rhodes wasn't part of Greece — very few know that and even fewer are aware of the heroic fights given by the inhabitants of the Southern Sporades towards their annexation to Mother Hellas. During the Italian Occupation of the Dodecanese, a dark period of Greek history, Italian fascism engages in a ruthless war of nerves against the Orthodox Greeks, as it calls them, first and foremost forbidding them to speak their mother tongue, work or have Greek conscience.
Within this historical framework, Stefano, a reporter of the Rhodian newspaper, is accused of murdering a Jewish prostitute, Rachel. Hunted down by the fascist police, he takes refuge in the Panormite monastery in Symi. On one of his solitary walks, he meets charming Lavinia, an archaeologist from Austria, whom he falls head over heels in love with. What role will this love story play in the life of Michael Apokis, a Greek journalist in New York, and what is the select relation that will force him — although wrecked by AIDS — to get his act together and return to Greece of 2000 in order to shed light on the mysterious murder committed in Rhodes? Three different love stories interrelated like a Russian doll — embedded within one another — reconstruct the narration of the story as well as the history of narration.