1941. Nazism advances in Europe. The iron control of Generalissimo Franco, like an icy wind, blows over the Galician cliffs. José Luis Merinero is a censor of the Ministry of Propaganda, a bitter man who has lost his wife and who turns books he touches into ashes. One morning, the censor is commissioned to investigate a mysterious manuscript entitled The Swarm, a fast-paced autobiographical novel where the translator Elsa Braumann tells how she has to steal the secrets that a prestigious Nazi scientist hides in a certain red notebook. Three hundred pages away separate José Luis Merinero from the author of the manuscript, but as the censor advances among spies, murderers and betrayals, he begins to feel a kind of fascination for her. He soon warns the censor that Elsa's endeavor is transforming her into a shadow. The manuscript, however, is an unfinished work: nothing is known about the outcome of the mission and the translator is missing. Driven by an insatiable thirst for redempt