A Greater Music

After falling into an icy river in Germany, a Korean writer begins moving through memories of the people and places that have shaped her time abroad. The present, spent looking after her intermittently absent boyfriend Joachim's home, overlaps with an earlier period in Berlin. Her thoughts return particularly to M, a German teacher whose devotion to music opened a different kind of intimacy between them. Joachim's practical world and M's artistic sensibility offer contrasting ways of understanding closeness. As recollection moves between these relationships, language becomes both a means of connection and a reminder of what cannot easily be shared. The novel follows desire through memory rather than a straightforward sequence of events.