Set in seventeenth-century Poland, The Slave tells the story of Jacob, a young Talmudic scholar sold into slavery after the Chmielnicki massacres - and who falls in love with his master's daughter, Wanda. Even after he is ransomed, he finds he can't live without her, and the two escape together to a distant Jewish community. Racked by his consciousness of sin in taking a wife who is not Jewish, and by the difficulties of concealing her identity, Jacob stands firm as the violence of the era threatens to destroy the ill-fated couple.