Standing outside his father's study in Paraguay, Rudi is smoking cigarettes, trying to work up the courage to go in. It has been seven years since he stood in that same spot; seven years since he left his family and their history behind him. As a teenager, Rudi discovered that his father was a doctor at Auschwitz. Trying to reconcile his inherited guilt, Rudi lashed out against his family and his friends, and eventually fled to Germany. While there, he follows in his father's footsteps by studying medicine, and falls in love with Sarah, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Questioning redemption, love, guilt, and the sins of the father, East of Berlin is a tour de force that follows Rudi's emotional upheaval as he comes to terms with a frightening past that was never his own.

Sarah Jean is a mathematics prodigy who finds safety in numbers, in the reliability of their defined nature. Her affinity for unhealthy relationships, however, remains a complete mystery. Her flings turn into year-long relationships against her better judgment and her confusing emotional patterns are only now coming to light. It’s time for Sarah Jean to make sense of her past in terms she understands and to discover there is more to time than just its inevitable passing. Elliot is a theoretical physicist who spends most of his time thinking about time and how to unify all physics. So when he meets Carmen, a violinist, the two bond over talks about music and theory. Talks that lead them into bed and into a marriage that should and shouldn’t be. As their relationship teeters through time, work and family become a balancing act, and theories are thrown to the stars, revealing truths they’re not ready to face.