Winters Garden, that’s the name of the idyllic colony beyond the city, where everything grows and flourishes abundantly, where the elders sit in the evenings playing the violin on the porch, the parents rock their infants, and the yard dogs lick the blood from the children’s scraped knees. Winters Garden is the place of longing to which the bird breeder Anton returns with his wife Frederike after years in the city, as everything begins to move and change: the houses and streets fall into decay, wild animals invade the front yards and back alleys, and the sleep of the people is heavy with dreams in which the life they once knew ceases to exist. In her award-winning novel, Valerie Fritsch powerfully and vividly depicts a world falling apart. And of two people who fall hopelessly in love with each other as the present feels nothing anymore.