In Moritz Franz Beichl's novel, two men meet who have nothing in common - except one essential thing: their father. Because everything distinguishes the narrator from his brother Konrad, the lawyer and family man who lives in a nice house - and perpetuates a conventional image of masculinity. More attractive, more modern, but with all the normative violence that has always been there. But now the father has died, the two brothers have to organise the funeral together - and for the first time the narrator has something to offer his older brother: a self-determined life as a ballet dancer, as a gay man, as a stubborn single man. The old conflicts break out, but reconciliation may also be possible without fully understanding each other's lives.

Moritz Franz Beichl’s compelling debut novel is an unrestrained hymn to desire, but also bears unvarnished witness to the realities of living with depression and bipolar disorder. When the narrator is abandoned by his boyfriend and – after a suicide attempt – is admitted to a psychiatric ward, he begins messaging his lost love. He texts obsessively, without hoping for a reply, but is lucid and ironic when discussing conditions at the hospital. After being discharged, he tries to find a precarious balance in his new life between ordinary everyday reality and excess. Building on these intimate, confessional passages, Beichl explores society’s treatment of feelings and bodies, of non-normative psyches and queer desires.