The new novel by the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize winner. A small town in the northern German province. Six people who are opening a new chapter in their lives. A day that changes everything. Fog lies over the fields and the canal. It's as if winter doesn't want to end in the small town of Lasseren in Emsland. Here in the flat countryside, there is not much going on year in, year out. If you're looking for work, you can't get past Möllring, the huge poultry slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the city. For a handful of people, this Monday morning begins with great expectations. Sonia, a single mother, hopes for a job far away from the chicken cutting assembly line. For the young engineer Anna, almost everything is at stake with the test run of a new automation process at Möllring. Merkhausen, on the other hand, an abandoned husband with a soft spot for Polish women and responsible for process optimization in the slaughterhouse, is eagerly awaiting a date in the evening. And then there is the Afghan refugee Nassim, who becomes entangled in an affair with Justyna, twenty years his senior, and firmly believes that his poems will soften the German officials.