It hasn’t got any easier to love and be loved. Maxim Biller shows what can happen when man and woman are overcome by this magnificent feeling, a feeling that should bring them together but more often than not drives them apart.
The constellations are modern, the subject traditional. In his collection of short stories, Maxim Biller describes modern-day people who meet for the first time, meet again, people who have known each other for years, often want more than they are prepared to give, people who surrender themselves and are rejected, people who pursue a lifelong passion or throw themselves into one adventure after the next, people who finally split up or are desperate to stay together, people who have one thing in common: a longing for true love. A love that needs no words, that’s simply there to stay. But usually, things turn out differently because it’s not always clear if both feel the same. They do a lot of talking but without understanding each other any better. The reader however understands many things and recognises many situations, and is entertained at his best because the stories are always also comical.
Maxim Biller writes in his own unique way: lucidly, warmly, tenderly and with subtle humour. And we realise that the language of love is spoken differently in Hamburg, Berlin, Prague and Tel Aviv. Rarely have we read such heartfelt accounts of people in love, or people who have been disappointed or deceived.
“[With] spare and taut prose... Biller delivers a collection in which nothing feels extraneous, where gestures may be slight but never insignificant.” (Village Voice)
