All starts on a cold day in February 2001, when Maya Duran, thirty-six years old, public relations officer at the University of Istanbul, welcomes at the city's airport the German-American professor Maximilian Wagner, eighty-seven years old.

Following the professor's wish, who taught at the same University in the 1930s, Maya leads him to a coastal town outside of Istanbul. There, where in 1941 a ship full of Jews sank by the Russians in the frozen waters of the Black Sea... There, where now the thread of a unique love story will begin to unravel amidst the turmoil of a great tragedy of the 20th century. And Maya will become, for the first time, a confidant of secrets concerning her own family...

"If the Nobel Prize was given to only one book, surely it would deserve to unanimously win the latest book by Livaneli. It is as touching as "Cinema Paradiso" and as shocking as "Schindler's List".

(Selahattin Duman, "Vatan" newspaper)