France, 1920. A starving young doctor, Dario Asfar, is desperate for money to provide food and lodgings for his wife and their newborn son. As an immigrant to France with an Italian and Greek background, he is mistrusted - even though he has French qualifications to practice medicine and has lived in country for fifteen years. He implores his Russian landlady and money-lender to help him. At first, she refuses, then agrees, on the condition that he perform a secret medical procedure on her daughter-in-law who she believes is ruining her son's life. The doctor agrees, however, his idealism plunges "into the hostile world of Western racism, so that he reemerges a cynical and corrupt creature, and a reluctant crook, determined to acquire honor"through any means necessary