Erich von Langheim, a Munich gallery owner of aristocratic antecedents has fled from dealing with the infidelity of his younger wife and gallery partner Karin to an out-of-the-way rural spot for a period of reflection and emotional recuperation. In this countryside the novel also turns into a reflection on country life versus existence in the city. Not that country life -- in all its coarseness, ignorance, and farmer's shrewdness in the exploiting of tourism -- is here idylicized. Yet the Langheim "prism" affords the uniting of the narrative's several themes -- midlife crisis, the "natural" versus the "artificial" life, instantly entwined and deepened as they are with the novel's most important theme: erotic obsession and art.