It is 1967, in a Viennese hospital. In separate wards, two men lie bedridden: the narrator, named Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of the celebrated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. Beginning with his memory of the hospital, Bernhard traces the growth of an intense friendship between two eccentric, obsessive man who share a passion for music. A strange sense of humor, brutal honesty, and a disgust for bourgeois Vienna. Part fiction, part memoir, Bernhard's evocation of the fear and longing for intimacy he and his truest friend share in the face of death chronicles both the spiritual symmetry that bonds them for twelve years and the emotional betrayal that elicits Bernhard's eulogy.