 Roithamer is deeply attached to his sister; this does not, however, prevent his provoking her death, which occurs on the very day that she moves into this conic house that he has built for her with formidable effort, in the Kobernausser forest.Roithamer has unwittingly killed his sister by forcing her to inhabit a house that was completely contrary to her own nature.The Austrian main character Roithamer, lecturer at Cambridge, after years of paroxystic projects, builds for his sister, the only person he ever loved, a house in the shape of a cone, right in the geometrically precise middle of the Kobernausser forest.