Franz K is a Prague insurance lawyer who is also a dedicated part-time writer of literature. After meeting Felice at his best friend's engagement party, he begins to correspond with her. Felice lives in Berlin. Their correspondence soon grows into a romantic relationship carried out nearly entirely in writing at first, though Franz visits Berlin occasionally to see her. Felice wants to take the relationship towards marriage and presses Franz in that direction. But Franz is ambivalent about marriage. It is something he strongly wants and equally strongly fears because he believes that his writing demands his single-minded dedication.

The result is a dramatic struggle he experiences internally between Franz the man and Franz the writer, with Felice becoming the unwitting battlefield on which it is fought, and its hapless victim. The struggle is the subject of the novel and it unfolds mainly between Prague and Berlin in a dramatic historical period starting just before the outbreak of World War 1 and continuing as the war progresses.