Martha and her mother own a guesthouse in a gloomy town in Bohemia. Martha wants to leave everything behind and dreams of a better life at the seaside. To make this dream come true, the two women rob their rich guests and then drown them. When a new guest shows up, the two women have no clue that he is the long gone son of their family, who had left twenty years earlier, never to be seen again. A fatal misunderstanding occurs.
Written by Camus in 1943, the play deals with the questions that are present throughout his entire literary work, about the meaning of life and the (im)possibility of luck in a God forsaken world.