Istanbul, 2004. Ruya, an embittered young woman, decides to write a book that is to change her life. Her novel, "A Hungarian Rhapsody," takes her back to 1915, to a little town in northern Italy, then to Budapest, to the life of a little girl: Alex, her great-grandmother. Alex's story unfolds through a world war, the loss of her father, an impossible love affair, marriage to a man she does not love and a life in Istanbul where she soon feels imprisoned. As Ruya writes her book, the discovery of her family's past shows her the way to her transformation, to how she can, if she dares, forgive herself for her greatest loss and cure her aching heart.