The report that Brodeck is writing into the lynching of an artist, an outsider, a flamboyant 'other' figure who has deeply disturbed the fragile equilibrium of the town he briefly settled in, becomes a report into the catastrophe of his own life. Brodeck, himself an outsider, has recently returned from a concentration camp. In the course of his investigation into the death of the artist, he uncovers the truth about his distant origins, about his having been rounded up when the Germans came to the town, and all that happened to his family when he was gone.
