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Ingeborg Bachmann's five short stories present masterfully portrayed images of women living in a world of absurd synchronicity, parallel use of languages, and the coexistence of experiences and sensations. The protagonist of the title story, a qualified translator, finds that neither she nor he has anything to say to each other during a short holiday with a man she hardly knows; the inert young girl whose greatest happiness is sleeping until noon or spending days in the hairdresser's shop; Miranda, who considers her myopia a "gift from God" because it allows her to avoid seeing all the details of malice, The old lady Jordan, whose only son has generously condemned her to a lonely existence in a small apartment, the successful photojournalist who comes to visit her father in the old house of her youth - all of them, in naive excitement or painful realisation, experience that long moment of horror during which they discover what was, what is and what could have been.