Paltiel, a 'mute poet' and witness to history, travels from his Jewish childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia to Paris in the 1930s and Spain during its Civil War. On his journey he embraces communism only to return to Russia to be imprisoned and disillusioned. In his prison cell Paltiel writes his testament to understand his faith in a world that has been torn apart. Encompassing Europe, and the history of the twentieth-century, Elie Wiesel pays tribute to the many writers killed by Stalin as well as creating, in Paltiel, one of the great Everyman characters of contemporary literature.