Ascher, a city doctor, leaves his wife and child and flees to the village of Obergreith, Styria, where he assumes a false identity. He has been found guilty of malpractice and now hopes to come to terms with his feelings of guilt and disorientation. Although Ascher tries to maintain his distance from the villagers, he is immediately included in country life and its rituals. Slowly he overcomes his alienation until he finally reassumes his old identity and resumes his medical practice among the villagers. The novel does not present an idealized depiction of life in the country. Ascher witnesses the hardship and destructive uniformity of rural existence, its resulting fatalism, resignation, and latent aggressions. When the possible threat of a rabies epidemic leads to an orgy of killing, the hunt takes on allegorical meaning, symbolizing the barely suppressed violence and brutality which govern life — not only in the country.
