Ludvik Jahn returns to his hometown after fifteen years away and arranges to stay in Kostka's apartment for the weekend.

Kostka takes Ludvik to a barbershop where a woman shaves his face; he half-recognizes her but cannot recall her name.

Young Ludvik sends his girlfriend Marketa a postcard joke referencing Trotskyism and mocking the optimism of her communist training course.

Party officials confront Ludvik with the postcard, accuse him of being a Trotskyite, and refuse to accept that it was a joke.

At a group meeting, Ludvik's friends, teachers, and fellow students vote to expel him from the Communist Party and university.

Expelled from the Party, Ludvik is assigned to a labor camp with other politically suspect conscripts, all wearing black insignia.

Ludvik spots a quiet, plain young woman named Lucie in a cinema and walks her home after the film ends.

Ludvik bribes a local man for use of his house and attempts to violently force himself on Lucie; she resists and he relents.

Camp laborers pour water on Alexej's bunk expecting to wake him; he does not react and is pronounced dead.

Ludvik sneaks out of the labor camp searching for the vanished Lucie, is caught by guards, and sentenced to a year in jail.

After sex, Helena tells Ludvik she loves him and that her marriage to Zemanek has been effectively over for years.

Pavel Zemanek approaches Ludvik at the festival and introduces himself; the two make strained small talk alongside Zemanek's young mistress.

Ludvik tells Helena he does not love her and walks away, leaving her alone with her young assistant Jindra.

Distraught after Ludvik's rejection, Helena swallows all the pills from Jindra's coat pocket and hands him a suicide note addressed to Ludvik.

Jaroslav suffers a heart attack during the folk concert; a bandmate who is a doctor assures Ludvik that Jaroslav will survive.

The novel centers on Ludvik Jahn, a once-idealistic student expelled from the Communist Party after writing a sarcastic postcard that officials misread as political subversion. Stripped of his university position and forced into a labor camp, Ludvik watches his youthful optimism slowly collapse under hard labor and political humiliation. While in the camp, he forms an attachment to a quiet woman named Lucie, but his attempts to force intimacy drive her away and cost him a year in prison. Decades later, Ludvik engineers an elaborate revenge plot, seducing Helena — the wife of the man he blames for his expulsion — only to discover her marriage was already crumbling and his revenge is meaningless. At his lowest point, Ludvik reconnects with his oldest friend Jaroslav through music, and a heart attack during the concert reminds him that life and friendship still hold meaning.

The core story of Ludvik's joke, exile, and failed revenge.

Kostka confirms to Ludvik that the woman who shaved him at the barbershop is Lucie, now living under a different name.

Helena reflects on her marriage to Zemanek and the Kremlin locket he gave her, which she still wears every day.

After the postcard is reported to the Party, Marketa stops responding to Ludvik's letters and effectively vanishes from his life.

Ludvik seeks out Pavel Zemanek to help clear his name; the two bond over folk music and Zemanek promises to assist.

Ludvik's mother dies while he is serving his prison sentence; he is not permitted to attend her funeral.

Released from prison, Ludvik signs up for additional years in the mining camp to avoid conscription into the regular military.

Jaroslav wakes from a dream in which strangers declare him king and blindfold him to lead him in search of his queen.

Jaroslav recalls seeing Ludvik walking through town earlier that day and being pointedly ignored by his oldest friend.

Jaroslav remembers playing traditional folk music on his harmonium for his son Vladimir, hoping to pass down a love of the tradition.

Jaroslav recalls how he and Ludvik became close childhood friends after both boys lost their fathers at a young age.

Ludvik walks through town, witnesses a secular baby-naming ceremony, and unexpectedly runs into an old school friend named Kovalik.

Ludvik takes Helena to a traditional Moravian restaurant for lunch, flatters her, and tells her openly that he is attracted to her.

Jaroslav speaks to radio journalist Helena at the festival, publicly praising the authorities' support for folk traditions despite recent funding cuts.

Ludvik and Jindra rush through the building searching for Helena and find her pale but alive in an outdoor toilet.

Jaroslav's wife tells him that Vladimir decided to attend motorcycle races instead of taking part in the Ride of the Kings.

While Ludvik drives the main plot, the novel's secondary characters carry their own emotional weight and reveal the full scope of life under the regime. Helena enters the story through her own perspective, still wearing a locket given to her by her estranged husband Zemanek, unaware she is about to be used as a pawn in someone else's revenge. Jaroslav's sections reveal a musician who spent decades preserving folk traditions his own son now wants no part of, building toward a painful reckoning at the festival. The flashbacks to Ludvik's time in the labor camp show the small humiliations and strange solidarities that formed among men condemned to wear the black insignia. By the end of the weekend, Helena is found alive after her desperate gesture, and Jaroslav must finally accept that his son chose motorcycle races over the ceremonial role of king.

The supporting cast and parallel stories behind Ludvik's world.

Helena recalls meeting Ludvik during a radio interview and agreeing to visit his hometown in Moravia with him.

Ludvik is stripped of his post in the Students Union and his case is escalated to higher Party authorities.

Marketa breaks her silence to tell Ludvik that his postcard joke was a serious crime; he refuses to admit any guilt.

Ludvik returns home and is asked to serve as best man at Jaroslav's wedding, where he feels disgust at the secular ceremony.

Ludvik grows increasingly convinced he loves Lucie after she routinely leaves flowers for him despite never writing a single letter back.

The artist Cenek paints a raunchy mural on a camp building; an outraged young officer uses it to punish the entire unit.

Honza's secret escape route through the camp perimeter fence is discovered, and the entire company is placed under strict disciplinary punishment.

Alexej tells Ludvik he did not betray the escape route; Ludvik later discovers that Alexej previously informed on his own father.

Kostka discovers a runaway girl named Lucie hiding on a collective farm, takes her into his care, and introduces her to Christianity.

Lucie confesses to Kostka that a gang of teenage boys in her hometown of Cheb pressured her into sex against her will.

Lucie declares her love for Kostka and they have sex; he later deeply blames himself for betraying his wife and faith.

Kostka confesses to himself that he has heard rumors suggesting Lucie's husband is now abusing her.

During the Ride of the Kings procession, Jaroslav studies the elaborately veiled king and cannot confirm whether his son is beneath the costume.

Jaroslav's wife confirms Vladimir abandoned his role as king; a furious Jaroslav breaks plates in the kitchen and storms outside.

Ludvik finds Jaroslav sitting alone in a field holding his violin and asks to play alongside his folk band that evening.

Beneath the main plot run a series of revelations that recontextualize nearly everything the reader has been told. Helena's section reveals she genuinely fell for Ludvik during their radio interview, making his manipulation of her all the more cruel. Ludvik's expulsion began not with the tribunal but earlier, when he was stripped of his Party post and started to suspect his joke had exposed some secret dissidence in himself. The full story of Lucie — the woman Ludvik mythologized — is only revealed through Kostka, who learned of her childhood abuse and understood what Ludvik never could. Kostka's compassion for Lucie contrasts sharply with Ludvik's attempted assault, showing how the same woman was treated with either empathy or cruelty depending on the man involved. The pool ends as the two old friends prepare to face the final night together, with Jaroslav's shattered legacy and broken plates clearing the way for something more honest.