Aaron-Chaim Mendelevich Finkelmeyer is a Jew and a poet who works for the Ministries of Fisheries in Siberia. Because of his heritage, the only way he can get his work published is to discover the oral literature of an obscure minority population, the Tongors, which he publishes under the guise of a translation. This comic masquerade turns serious when his work gets the attention of the KGB, and when a Siberian hunter, the owner of the name Finkelmeyer uses as a pseudonym, appears to take his revenge.