It is 1935, and the Nazis have banned Jews from play­ing a Brahms sym­pho­ny in pub­lic, declar­ing: ​“It is beyond our com­pre­hen­sion that the immor­tal Ger­man vio­lin con­cer­to of Brahms could be entrust­ed to a Jew.” Although Got­tfried Keller, a non-Jew­ish vio­lin­ist, is not affect­ed by this decree, his friend, Ernst, a Jew, is, point­ing out to the edi­tors of the paper who pub­lished the decree that Brahms ded­i­cat­ed his con­cer­to to Joseph Joachim, a Jew. Keller has lit­tle emo­tion­al reac­tion to the sit­u­a­tion, and dis­miss­es it by telling Ernst not to over­re­act and that it would all soon go away. When his friend leaves Ger­many, Keller responds with a sim­i­lar sense of detach­ment, and has sim­i­lar emo­tion­al expe­ri­ences with a Jew­ish woman he had planned to mar­ry. Only when he is asked to per­form at a con­cen­tra­tion camp does Keller begin to rethink his approach to life. 

Although upon arrival at the con­cen­tra­tion camp Keller notes that the inmates who will be his audi­ence will most like­ly not sur­vive more than a week after he per­forms for them, his only real con­cern is con­cen­trat­ing on per­fect­ing his abil­i­ty to play the Bach Cha­conne he has cho­sen. Over the course of his stay at the camp, he observes the inhu­mane treat­ment of the peo­ple who are forced to stand naked in four degree weath­er for a half hour before they are shot to death, real­iz­ing that the only thing the guards and com­man­dant can think of for over­com­ing their bore­dom is how to inten­si­fy the pain they can inflict on their vic­tims before they kill them. How Keller attempts to resolve his role in this camp occurs on the fourth day of his visit. 

The con­cept of a nar­cis­sis­tic Ger­man vio­lin­ist hav­ing to play music for con­cen­tra­tion camp inmates is a nov­el one. Even more inter­est­ing is that although nar­cis­sism is one of the most dif­fi­cult prob­lems for ther­a­pists to cure, this book seems to present one. The cure in this nov­el seems to lie in the nar­cis­sis­tic per­son fac­ing a gut-wrench­ing sit­u­a­tion which reach­es the deeply inhib­it­ed emo­tion­al life of the per­son afflict­ed with the problem.