Two brothers who could not be more different: One of them a business trainee in a catalogue company, the other a widely celebrated magician on the world’s stages. And both become fierce competitors for the audience’s favour and the »Magical Circle«´s appreciation.
This novella, first published in 1980, deals with an abysmal relationship between brothers, with truth and illusion and with the quest for the perfect illusion. The older brother, Alfredo, filled his audience with exaltation from an early age by performing his magic tricks. He was admitted to the »Magical Circle« at the age of 14 as the youngest member ever. His younger brother Marco however took up a bourgeois career. And while Alfredo develops new tricks with an overboarding energy and reckless ambition, Marco is threatened to be paralyzed with boredom. Until Alfredo asks him to assist him in preparing his most grandiose trick ever. For the `vision-wonder´ he needs a perfect double. Marco is trained to copy his brother – a role that he refuses to take on in perpetuity. The situation escalates when – just before his character is fully erased – Marco steps out and instead of keeping in the background starts to perform magic himself.
