In his mid-fifties, the narrator moves in with his eighty-something mother in the countryside to write a novel about the theater entitled “Shame and Stage.” The weeks that follow are incomparable and eventful ones, during which, with his mother’s help, he finds his way out of a deep existential crisis.
After a stroke throws him off course in Vienna, Joachim Meyerhoff hopes to regain his footing by starting over in Berlin. But everything turns out differently than expected. The new city wears on his nerves and he is finding his artistic work as a writer and actor increasingly difficult every day.
At his young son’s birthday party, an incident occurs that leaves no doubt that things can’t go on like this. The narrator leaves Berlin and moves in with his very self-sufficient mother in the countryside, on a beautiful piece of land not far from the sea. Mother and son have always been very close, but these weeks together become a special time. The son enters into his mother’s daily routine, begins to write his theater novel and other stories, and gradually finds his way out of the anger and anxiety that have accompanied him his whole life.
