Set against the beautiful backdrop of the Vosges mountains, Lenz tells the tale of the real-life writer J.M.R. Lenz's nineteen-day stay in Waldersbach in 1778, describing his wanderings around the mountainous surroundings and his worsening fits of madness, eventually culminating in his removal, under guard, to Strasbourg.

Valued both as a chilling exploration of paranoid schizophrenia and an influential forerunner of literary modernism, this existential drama boasts a prose style startlingly ahead of its time.