Stier was Ralf Rothmann's first novel: a look back at the youth of the seventies. In Wäldernacht, Ralf Rothmann continues the story of a generation. He tells the tale of Jan Marré, a painter living in Berlin, who has little left from the artistic upheaval of his early years except for his drinking. As a life-worn forty-year-old, he returns to his hometown between Oberhausen and Bottrop for a one-year scholarship. On the Feast of Corpus Christi this year, Ralf Rothmann has Jan Marré encounter the people from his past after a night of heavy drinking; and he sketches the grotesque portrait of a small town, where paranoia lurks behind the facades - and dramatically erupts.