Born in Stuttgart in 1901, the author worked as a lawyer in Germany, before fleeing the Nazis in 1933, moving to France, where he was a painter, then Spain, and by 1936 settled in the United Kingdom.

The book focuses on the impossible friendship between the narrator Hans Schwarz, son of a Jewish doctor, and Konradin von Hohenfels, a young aristocrat, during the rise of the Nazi regime (in 1932) in Stuttgart, Germany.

Hans' parents, who suspect the harassment suffered by their son in high school, decide to send him to the United States to live with his grandparents, where he studies law at Harvard University in Massachusetts and becomes a lawyer.

Long after his studies, Hans receives a letter from Germany from Karl Alexander Gymnasium, his former high school, accompanied by a booklet containing a list with all the names of former students who died in the war.

Just before throwing the booklet away, he decides to look at the H and discovers the name of his friend, and that is when one understands the true meaning of friendship found.