Eight essays on literature, language, art, Europe and life from one of
Germany's most revered living writers.
After a visit to Putin's old postbox, the reader is taken to Dresden and
Brixton, Gdańsk and Minsk, diverted to birds, bees, stray cats and pet
dogs, confronted with Stasi and KGB, Proust and Jah Shaka, puzzled by
overcoats and anoraks, Francis Bacon and Vermeer, and lost (then found)
in service stations and memorial centres. Throughout, Marcel Beyer
forges unexpected links and makes unpredictable leaps.
"I work from the margins, partly very literally as I build my sentences,
for instance when I start with the name of a colour rather than a noun,
to explore how the sentence might be steered from there to a subject. In
my reading, I am drawn to the outliers or, as malicious claims would
have it, to the obscure. Central books: that is, those everyone can
agree on, have never much interested me. I am rarely tempted to explore
the centre of my world in writing, and even if I did want to encroach
upon a centre, I would have to choose a path from the outside. But
outside, too, one advances to the heart of things."
Inspired by the great W. G. Sebald, Beyer's playful literary
investigations wend through the high points and horrors of Europe's
artistic history, towards a profoundly personal conclusion.
