The young and wild Perceval lives in a wood with his mother. She wants to keep the world away from him; a world, which she hates because she has lost her beloved husband. Perceval has never seen a stranger. But when he finds out about his heritage he wants to become a knight as his father was. He leaves his mother who in her grief dies. He learns to say "I am Perceval" and to make himself understood to others. But he doesn't know the difference between good and evil. He has to learn everything new and experience for himself what grief and happiness mean. He meets a society full of intrigues, of arrogance but also of destruction and despair. In his search for happiness, for release and for the Holy Grail he becomes a murderer and destroyer himself. He falls in despair and finds comfort only where he recognizes himself. Tankred Dorst's scenario leads the heroic figure of Perceval on the way out of the dark forest of medieval times into the modern era and into our present time. He guides him on the border line of crime carried out in the name of doubtful promises of final release. He is accompanied by Merlin, the legendary figure of the sorcerer, who tries to confuse him, who asks him questions and follows him with curiosity.
What Perceval has to learn is: There is guilt and there is no place for him
in the naive natural wilderness anymore.