 Set during a long hot summer in a small fishing village somewhere on the Baltic Sea, most likely on the Curonian Spit, it depicts a group of aristocratic city-dwellers spending their holidays in that remote part of the German Empire.However, rather than painting a rural idyll, Keyserling focuses on the follies of a doomed "fin de siècle" society whose self-imposed repressions eventually lead to catastrophe.It was published in English as Tides (Arthur J. Ashton, 1929) and Waves (Gary Miller, 2019).