Hartmut Lange’s stories are set in Munich, in a small town near Hamburg, on the Baltic Sea coast, and on the raw north-west coast of England. And again and again in Berlin, where past and present penetrate in a particularly palpable way. Eight stories which are as bright as day and mysteriously condensed, which depict and artfully capture precarious states of mind: deceptive promises of happiness, unfulfillable longing, the need of lonely people, the encounter with evil, the fear of failing.