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New York in the 1950s: Marty Mauser, a crafty salesman and table tennis ace, was supposed to build a career at his uncle’s shoe store. Instead, he travels to the World Championships in London, where he loses to a Japanese player using a new type of racket. In Tokyo, he would have the chance for a big rematch. But how to finance the trip when his girlfriend back home is pregnant, the cuckolded husband of a theater diva is out for revenge, and a mobster’s runaway dog needs to be found? Marty embarks on the obstacle course of his life.
On the grounds of a medieval German university town looms an imposing Ginkgo biloba, a tree whose longevity stands in marked contrast to three intimate, human-scaled stories. In 1908, the university’s first female student gains admission into the prestigious botany department, confronting the sexism of both professors and peers. In 1972, amidst counterculture movements, a reserved student finds his attention captured by a fellow housemate and the geranium plant she studies. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a neuroscientist from Hong Kong secures the help of a renowned botanist for an experiment on the old ginkgo tree.
