This masterful early work describes one day in the life of Walter Fendrich, a young washing machine repairman. Wry, ironic, yet intensely felt, it is an enchanting love story set amid the spiritual wreckage and growing materialism of postwar Germany.
Torn by insecurity and cynicism, Fendrich is obsessed with hunger, "with the wolf livnig inside my stomach." The water and wartime shortages haunt him at an insatiable craving for bread, a bottomless desperation for security and gratification of basic needs.. One day he finds himself and his world transformed when he meets the daughter of a high school principal. Love, he discovers suddenly, dispels his cravings as bread never could.