Set during the Nazi occupation of Prague, Life with a Star records the day-to-day life of Josef Roubicek, an ex-bank clerk, who discovers that the prosaic world he has always inhabited is suddenly off-limits to him because he is a Jew. "One of the most powerful works to emerge from the Holocaust; it is a fierce and necessary work of art".--The New York Times.

In Nazi-occupied Prague, ex-bank clerk Josef Roubick discovers that the prosaic world he has always inhabited is suddenly off-limits to him because he is a Jew. When he begins to observe his new, increasingly skewed, and macabre environment with resigned detachment, his life becomes centered on survival and on the surprisingly small things he clings to in order to persevere.

SS Officer Juliyus Schlesinger is ordered to remove the statue of the Jewish composer Mendelssohn from the roof of the Prague Academy of Music before an official concert. Unsure which of the statues is Mendelssohn, he tells his men to remove the one with the biggest nose. Unfortunately, this is the statue of Wagner.