Persona Non Grata in his homeland, protest singer Klaus Drittemann must leave East Berlin, his wife and child and emigrate to the West, where representatives of an American record company are eagerly awaiting him. They plan to exploit his defection from communism both ideologically and financially. But Klaus, as ill-at-ease in the West as in the East, is reluctant to be an expendable commodity. Leaving his contract unsigned (or signed in his manner), he departs for Cambridge to meet his father, a concert player, who left East Berlin when Klaus was young. He is accompanied by a young French journalist, Emma, who claims to have knowledge of where his father has been living since he disappeared for more than a decade.