A magnificent Künstlerroman about love and betrayal, a social scandal and fin-de-siècle bohemia
Lake Starnberg, summer 1901: playwright Max Halbe has invited his friends from the Schwabing district of Munich for a country escape. Eduard von Keyserling – outsider, aristocratic dandy and poet of European renown, is joining them and agrees to pose for the painter Lovis Corinth. The portrait will depict the Baltic count as downright fascinatingly ugly and will become legendary. During the sittings, Corinth repeatedly attempts to make Keyserling confess the truth about the rumors that circulate about his student years, but only gets evasive replies.
Shortly after, Keyserling’s obscure past catches up with him when attending a concert with Frank Wedekind. The beautiful singer immediately strikes him as familiar. Could this be the woman who got him embroiled in the scandal that forced him to flee to Vienna over 20 years ago and made him a persona non grata in aristocratic circles?
With empathy and a great deal of wit, Modick tells the story of how an outsider became the brilliant writer who depicted the dissolution of his own class with melancholy and shrewd irony.
Klaus Modick’s bestseller Konzert ohne Dichter (“Concert without a Poet”) sold more than 150.000 copies and was translated into Czech, French and Italian.
