The novel "The Fall" is the third part of the Kristlein trilogy. At its center is Anselm Kristlein, who in "Halbzeit" sought success in the business world as a representative and advertising professional, aggressively and audaciously; and who in "Das Einhorn" struggled in vain as a writer to salvage something from lived life, such as love, into memory. This Anselm Kristlein reaches his final stage in "The Fall"; his realms of experience, his points of friction, his trajectories of decline remain the same: economy and love. "The Fall" describes the conditions of the Federal Republic with a passionate interest, thus realistically, which is unparalleled in contemporary prose.