Three Polish mathematicians are the first to crack the sophisticated Enigma code used by the Germans just before the Second World War. They build replicas of the Enigma machines and manage to get two of the machines to the British and French code-breakers before the German invasion of Poland in 1939; they ask that recognition be given to their work at the end of the war. After the invasion, the Polish cipher bureau escapes and continues their decoding in Algeria and unoccupied France.

Set during the Nazi occupation of Poland, in which Michal witnesses the murder of his mother, wife and child. He is hurled into a life that literally is not his own; a surreal world littered with trapdoors, doppelgängers and wormholes. It also tells the true untold story of a Nazi vaccine laboratory where Jews and members of the resistance were “employed” as feeders for parasites infected with typhus.