For the widower Roland, an independent academic with a research fellowship at NYU, the business with women isn’t really an issue anymore. But when he meets Leyla at a memorial service in Manhattan, things suddenly look very different. Roland thinks he knows exactly what is and isn’t okay – and getting involved with a significantly younger woman like he’s about to do definitely isn’t. But she sees things differently and convinces him to throw himself into a relationship that holds an enormous potential for happiness but also leads to intractable conflict. As he commutes back and forth between his apartment in New York and his teaching commitments in Berlin, Roland has plenty of time to miss Leyla, to question his principles and to talk – and hear a lot from his friends – about love. The result is an exceedingly surprising, very instructive and extremely entertaining panorama of relationships.
Peter Schneider has captured one of the major themes of literature – the fluctuating relationships between men and women – in a love story that stands at the heart of this novel. Around it, other romantic adventures and catastrophes play out, which Roland and his friends talk about in their “Club of the Steadfast.” Fascinating stories about what men and women go through when they become involved with each other.
