On Christmas Eve 1993 a 19 year old student killed several people – all of whom were complete strangers – for no apparent reason. What brought victims and killer together? As in the first two parts of the trilogy (THE SEVENTH CONTINENT, BENNY'S VIDEO), the focus of the plot is an act of violence which lacks a sufficiently explicable motive. The longitudinal section through the two family histories is here followed by a cross-section through the structure of society. What has remained unchanged is the absence of psychology and other dramatic strategies of reassurance, an insistence on the spectator's ability to think and feel for himself, the belief in the moral power of art to unsettle and disconcert, as well as anger at the sleek aesthetics of acquiescence.