At almost fifty years of age, Teodoro Sagredo, a secondary school teacher, shaves off his beard. However, this ordinary action changes his life drastically since neither his family nor closest friends recognise him and, despite insisting on his true identity, he is put in a mental hospital. There, he forms relationships with various people: his doctor, the mother superior of the nuns who work there, a girl he falls in love with and calls Liberty, and, in the extraordinary hospital library, the writer Pio Baroja and various other characters, some unlikely, others literary… From the confines of his room, Teodoro relates his own tale, this singular story which, at its heart, questions our very identity in the surrounding world.