Arnold Chipper, the hopeful son, returns to his homeland after World War I, feeling stateless. He sits in cafes, futilely searching for meaning in a permanent office job or a fresh start... He is the "young man of the [World War I] generation," the exemplary figure of a disillusioned and demoralized generation.

And his father, old-Chipper, is a characteristic example of the previous generation, which spent a great deal of its energy climbing from the position of proletarian to that of (petty) bourgeois.

As a precursor to Roth's great novels, such as "Radetzky March," which can be considered part of the same unity, this work prepares the reader for the author's outstanding art of shaping characters that express an entire era, chronologically situated before and after World War I.