Deeply in love, a couple decides to leave everyday life behind and retreat to an island far from civilization. Just the two of them, just as they are. Merely living together will be enough – they want to focus only on loving and being. They arrive, settle into their new home, and let themselves drift in the summertime island idyll. Soon, however, they begin to notice strange things: the grim looks of their neighbor, an old woman who stares at them from her rocking chair; an olive tree uprooted by invisible forces, that falls just in front of their rented car; a whispering that blows through olive groves at the new moon. Are these just the fantasies of the two protagonists? What is real? And what is this reality stretching toward, layer by layer? In an environment of increasingly sinister events, their seclusion gradually threatens to engulf them between light and shadow – and as it does, many questions are forced on the lovers.

As he did previously in his novella Die Liebenden bei den Dünen, Lu Bonauer writes about love – in Tausend Schichten Sommerland, about the draw of a love deeply felt. Beyond that, he writes about how in the wake of this wonderful force, lovers can risk losing their individual selves as they merge with one another and their intense relationship.