The particular strength of Hrabal's writing is in its interweaving of everyday situations with the highest reaches of the human mind. The film presents visually this meeting of the sublime and the prosaic. It juxtaposes Hrabal's world with images of the characters and streetscapes he portrayed. Prague, city of towers, domes and Baroque churches, but also of smoking chimneys, dark streets and the subterranean world of Hanta, Hrabal's protagonist in Too loud a solitude.

The settings of the film are Prague, Hrabal's dacha in Kersko, the brewery where he worked in Nymburk, the many pubs he frequented, the iron foundry in Kladno (Hrabal's 'university of life') and other locations associated with Hrabal and his literary characters. Three years after his tragic death, Hrabal's closest friends meet at 'U Horkych', one of his favourite pubs in Prague. This gathering provides the film's unifying thread. While philosophising, laughing and drinking to the accompaniment of songs and harmonica music, the writer's friends shed light on his complex personality and the work of this 'existential master'.