Windstill is set in Hamburg in the winter of 2015. Lora, a 22-year-old university drop-out, is staying with her widowed German grandmother after the sudden death of her grandfather. The novel takes place in the week following the funeral, where all kinds of uninvited guests and unexpected histories emerge. Elfriede's buried postwar memories resurface after her husband's death, and Lora must somehow protect her grandmother from a puzzling history while negotiating her own heartbreak.