All the characters in this book live in a boarding house located in a small German town, owned by an elderly lady, Frau Schulze. The tenants - all, without exception, immigrants from Ukraine (this is the owner's whim) - practically do not communicate with each other, and therefore their stories almost do not intersect, each unfolding on its own. Apart from their place of residence, they have one thing in common - they all stubbornly try to seem different from who they really are. And all her guests are watched by the hostess of the boarding house, who knows much more about them than they know about themselves. And this is not simple curiosity, because she needs to choose only one of them - the one who will decipher a letter from the distant past for her...