Upon his father's death, a Hungarian stage actor travels to Israel for the funeral and meets his stepmother for the first time.

Ernst Stadler is a successful, award-winning chef with his own gourmet restaurant. His older brother Ludwig is also a chef, but is currently in prison. Adrian, the youngest of the three, is a nurse and gay. When their mother dies, they travel together to the funeral in Saxony-Anhalt. There they find a clue about Wickerl's biological father. They track down Ernst's father in Hungary. He had once abandoned his pregnant mother. Adrian is not a brother in the biological sense; he was adopted by his mother as a foundling. Nevertheless, they come to the conclusion: "And the three of us are still brothers."

The poor little Ferkó is trying to enrich his miserable life with imaginary fairy tale figures and superstitious little stories. He suffers from diphtheria, and while he is having a visionary dream, Cinkekirály (Titmouse King) saves him from the claws of the magic Küsmödi. He expects his magic jacket to enable him to know everything at school without having studied.

In Budapest, two Americans live together. Adam, a former Manhattan prosecutor at work on his first novel, and Lisa, a cool hard-working financier who idolizes her boss (former Communist turned deal maker, Kovacs) as she tires of Adam's lifestyle. Cut to the subway, where two tough guys are pursuing Marta, a blond waif. She manages to surprise one of them in a hallway, dispatching him with a straight razor, and she barges into Adam's apartment to elude the other. She tells Adam why she is running, a story that implicates Kovacs, and she seeks Adam's help and affection. He takes her side, and slowly Lisa, Adam, Kovacs, Marta, and her pursuer draw toward a showdown.

1952, Budapest. Kati is thirteen years old when her mother dies. Her father works as a founder at the Miskolc foundry, deprived of his former position of director-engineer. Kati is left alone in their flat, transformed into a place crowded with tenants. That is, not quite: in her imagination her mother is alive again, for she still needs her.

A battle-scarred, has-been Hungarian cop, tormented by his memories of nearly killing an innocent woman in his custody, enters into a Faustian pact in which he trades his soul for a handful of "magic" bullets that always hit the mark. A mysterious and mythical story.