Marian Kovacs is asleep in his cell when the prison guard wakes him as he has a flashback: Born in 1972 into a gypsy family that, government experts claimed, was unable to provide him with a "conventional" education, Marian Kovacs was the victim of cruel assimilation efforts in Czechoslovakia. He was torn from his mother at the age of three and placed in an orphanage. Unable to speak Czech and devoid of any sense of hygiene, he was the immediate subject of contempt and rejection. A few years later, Marian was placed in an institution for mentally handicapped children. He was labeled a "mental retard," branded with "hereditary defects inherent in his tribe," and told that he was fated to a bleak future. He was beaten, exploited, punished, and cast aside. Marian thus grew up wild and rebellious, in a hostile world that cared nothing for him, sent from orphanage to reformatory, on the run when not in prison. His utter despair changes, however, when he meets his prison counselor, Eva.