The novel is set on New Year's Day and takes place during a bicycle ride up a mountain slope on the island of Lanzarote, as the cyclist Henning reviews his own life, which feels increasingly alien to him.

His wife Theresa accuses him of being insufficient due to his neurotic personality and flirted with a Frenchman at the New Year's dinner the night before.

The exhausting bicycle ride makes him hallucinate and reminisce about his childhood in search for a possible origin of his struggles.

[2] Kirkus Reviews called the book a "spine-tingler" that portrays "a spectacularly hallucinatory middle-aged crisis".

It was directed by Yazdkhasti in a production for the Theater Bielefeld that starred Lukas Graser and Leona Grundig.