A sweeping, delirious romance begins in the Polish countryside, where Wiktor, a musician on a state-sponsored mission to collect folk songs, discovers a captivating young singer named Zula. Over the next fifteen years, their turbulent relationship will play out in stolen moments between two worlds: the jazz clubs of decadent, bohemian Paris, to which he defects, and the corrupt, repressive Communist Bloc, where she remains, universes bridged by their passion for music and for each other.