After serving a prison sentence, Simon returns to his village; it is evening, cold shadows over the houses, and behind the lit windows, the villagers are warm. Simon embarks on his second, this time lifelong sentence, an outcast on the fringes of his own community. The 65-year-old takes on a task that is impossible to fulfill: he is to fell trees in a place in the forest that is actually inaccessible. Yet Simon confronts his fate - and crosses the boundary to the earthly in multiple ways. He encounters a spirit, the devil, an angel, and death. The title "Akkord" embodies a range of meanings from musical harmony to agreement and piecework, serving as a leitmotif for the characters in Peer’s prose: a harmony that can only resonate through meager and bitter labor, harmony in disharmony, an oxymoron.