In an autumnal love story of erotic obsession, possessiveness, remembrance, oblivion, and time, an elderly woman dwells upon a failed love affair of some time past, when she was no longer young but not yet old. The narrator relives meeting her lover, Franz, at the natural history museum, when, for the first time in her life, she experiences all-consuming love and absolute happiness. Ultimately the affair founders because of her inability to believe that Franz will actually leave his wife. After he disappears from her life, she withdraws from the world, waiting for his return and revisiting...

Pavel was Monika Maron's grandfather. But she only remembers him in black and white, as he left his children behind in Berlin when he was deported to his native Poland, and afterwards perished in a concentration camp. As a grown-up with a son of her own, researching a documentary for German television, Monika discovers letters which her grandfather wrote to Monika's mother, Hella. Teasing her family's past out of the fog of oblivion and lies, one of Germany's greatest writers asks about the secrets families keep and about what becomes of the individual mind when the powers that be turn...