One day, ordinary Norwegian girl Sofie receives a videotape on which a certain Alberto Knox talks directly to her from ancient Greece. They start to meet on different occasions as Alberto takes Sofie on an odyssey through the history of philosophy, from ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and all the big revolutions, up to today. Throughout this journey, they realize that they are only fictions of a writer's imagination and start conceiving a plan to escape into reality.