Joseph in the Land of the Mizraim reveals the real-life and interwoven stories of Joseph, a precocious Jewish boy from Warsaw; Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who disobeys his government to save Jewish refugees; Jerzy, a gay Polish comedian in love with a Nazi officer, and his funny and foul-mouthed parrot, Pu-fu; Noorunissa Khan, the heroic Indian princess-turned-spy working for the British in Paris; Marian, a lusty German farm girl whose father uses Jews as slave laborers; Michal, the philosophical Polish priest (based on Pope John Paul II) who is captured and taken with Joseph on a cattle-car bound for Auschwitz; and an all-too-human Adolf Hitler, whom the reader first meets attending an intimate dinner party at the home of his close friend and adoring young niece in the Black Forest.