Joachim Linde, the hero of Jacob Arjuny's novel Homework, is a high school teacher who gives the impression of a respectable person for whom everything in life is going as well as possible. However, in his lessons there are heated discussions, often ending in scandal, about Germany's Nazi past, his wife is in a psychiatric hospital, his daughter recently tried to commit suicide, and his son was in a car accident. At the end of the book, it becomes clear that the cause of all these events is Linde himself, an insidious, deceitful person who manages to turn even the misfortunes of his loved ones to his own benefit.