Summer 1944. Walter Proska is about to return to the Eastern Front when his train is blown up by partisans. Together with a scattered bunch of German soldiers, cut off from the front, he awaits certain death while the commands of his superior Willi Stehauf are becoming more and more senseless and inhuman.
While on vacation with their bickering parents in Portugal, Eva and her little brother Johnny find two strange clots of clay on a polluted beach, who can speak and move on their own. They create two octopuses out of the blue and green material and take them home to Prague, soon discovering that their new pets attract electricity and other disasters.
In a politically, morally and economically destroyed country, three sisters of an industrialist family in post-war Germany reinvent themselves and set the course for their future.
The German inspector Max Grosz sets off with the Norwegian policewoman Thea Koren to Spitsbergen in search of his missing nephew. In the process, they delve deeper and deeper into a web of intrigue and political interests, because the disappearance is apparently connected to the controversial takeover of an agricultural company.
Family saga set in 19th century Germany, chronicling the lives of three generations of the Buddenbrook family, the owners of a family business in the northern town of Luebeck. Based on the novel by Thomas Mann.