he time: Easter 1974. The place: Frankfurt am Main. A lawyer is found dead in his office. Was it murder, suicide, or death through natural causes?
His wife, separated from him for some years, suddenly finds she has to come to terms not only with his work but with many other aspects of his life - and with her love for him. He was a defence lawyer, working for the political left. But how well did she really know this man, who still seems to her so very much alive, whose death just does not seem real to her?
Private grief is a luxury she is not allowed. The police suspect her of complicity in various nefarious and unresolved political activities. His friends and associates keep contacting her with mysterious questions and cryptic messages. She has to grapple not only with the memories of her unresolved love, but also with the ongoing responsibilities to her husband's clients and with the tangled web of his connections with the political underground.
Who can she trust, who can she turn to for help? Where will she find friends, where do her enemies lie? She feels obliged to protect her husband's memory, preserve his work and ideas, even if there is a lot she does not understand, even if his death does not seem real to her. She visits his colleagues, his clients from the twilight world of the political underground, his political comrades, former revolutionaries, members of the underworld. And through these encounters - some moving, some disturbing, some grotesque - she sees her the familiar figure of her husband ever more clearly and discovers the side of him she never really knew existed.
His wife, separated from him for some years, suddenly finds she has to come to terms not only with his work but with many other aspects of his life - and with her love for him. He was a defence lawyer, working for the political left. But how well did she really know this man, who still seems to her so very much alive, whose death just does not seem real to her?
Private grief is a luxury she is not allowed. The police suspect her of complicity in various nefarious and unresolved political activities. His friends and associates keep contacting her with mysterious questions and cryptic messages. She has to grapple not only with the memories of her unresolved love, but also with the ongoing responsibilities to her husband's clients and with the tangled web of his connections with the political underground.
Who can she trust, who can she turn to for help? Where will she find friends, where do her enemies lie? She feels obliged to protect her husband's memory, preserve his work and ideas, even if there is a lot she does not understand, even if his death does not seem real to her. She visits his colleagues, his clients from the twilight world of the political underground, his political comrades, former revolutionaries, members of the underworld. And through these encounters - some moving, some disturbing, some grotesque - she sees her the familiar figure of her husband ever more clearly and discovers the side of him she never really knew existed.
