The Nobel Prize drew attention not only to the works of Ivo Andrić, but also to his biography. The reputation of the winner of the greatest prize in the world is also the reputation of the country from which he comes. State services, tasked with ensuring that reputation, are reviewing a video from a military parade in Berlin in 1940, where Andrić, then a diplomat of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, is seen in the immediate vicinity of Hitler. In the writer's house, the phone doesn't stop ringing and Andrić feels that his whole life so far is exposed to the views and comments of the public. He goes back to the post-war years, to the founding assembly of the Association of Writers, the Belgrade meeting with Krlež, conversations with Isidora Sekulić. In 1945, Nenad Jovanović, Milica Babić's husband, returns from the Dachau camp, and Andrić goes to Bulgaria for the Meeting of Balkan Writers.

Preparations for Stockholm are taking a long time. With Vera Stojić, his colleague, secretary and confidant of many decades, Andrić goes through the schedule of obligations in Sweden, through which their complicated relationship is revealed. While the drama The ceremony based on his short story is being broadcast on television, Andrić goes for a walk to Prizrenska to visit Kaja and Brana, whom he has not seen since he moved out of their apartment.

He feels like a hostage to his own past, which in this episode drags him back to 1946, to his entrance speech at SAN and meetings with Milica, then to 1948, the year of the Informburo, which found him in the position of president of the Association of Writers of Yugoslavia, an Association whose many members were expelled for resolutions, and some sent to Goli Otok.

The state is still working on maintaining the reputation of the Nobel laureate and carefully combing through his past. Andrić sets off for Fruška Gora to the weekend home of his friend Mladen Leskovac. On the train, a man who introduces himself as a journalist hands him a box that once contained the medal he left with Brana Milenković for safekeeping. On Fruška Gora, together with Leskovac, he visits churches and monasteries.

The line of memories extends to 1951, to an exhibition marking 10 years since the beginning of the war, where a photograph of the signing of the Tripartite Pact was displayed. Impressions of Isidora Sekulić regarding the yet-to-be-published "The Damned Yard" are recalled. After that, it moves to 1957, the year Milica's husband, Nenad Jovanović, passed away, and the following year, when Ivo Andrić and Milica Babić finally got married.

In Belgrade in 1961, there was a hepatitis epidemic. Andrić, along with Koča Popović, Vuča, and Čolaković, goes over the travel protocol and receives instructions regarding potential questions about dissident Milovan Đilas, whose book Conversations About Stalin is set to be published in New York. Andrić works with Vera Stojić on his speech for the award ceremony.

A postcard arrives from Helena Ižikovska from Poland, which takes him back to the past, to 1914, when as a young student he lived with her family in Krakow. Upon learning about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Andrić leaves Helena and Krakow and travels back to his homeland, first to Zagreb, then to Split, where he meets his friends, fighters against the Austro-Hungarian occupation, and his youthful love, Evgenija Gojmerac. As a member of Young Bosnia, Andrić is arrested by the occupation authorities and taken to a prison in Split.

In Belgrade, at the "Censorship" Cinema, officials watch Andrić at the awarding of the Nobel Prize. Andrić returns from Stockholm with Milica via Switzerland, the country where he refused to take refuge at the beginning of the war and decided to spend the war with his people. His memory takes him to 1941, when he arrived in occupied Belgrade with Milica and Nenad Jovanović and settled in the apartment of the Milenković family. This is followed by interrogations by the Special Police and pressure to sign the Quisling Appeal to the Serbian people. Andrić refuses to sign the Appeal and tries to distance himself from the occupation authorities. He is faced with everyday horrors: hangings at Terazije, terror of Germans and Nedicians, trains full of Greek Jews. Andrić retires to writing, but the pressure from the police is great, they question him again in connection with his Masonic past.