A language and style charmer like no other – in this major work, Michael Maar draws on the sum of his reading experience. What is style, what is jargon, and what traps does almost everyone fall into? How do the elementary particles need to interact for the perfect prose sentence? Maar shows who can do dialogue and who can’t, why Hölderlin is overrated and Rahel Varnhagen underrated, why Kafka is an alien and why Heimito von Doderer is the only one who can hold a candle to Thomas Mann. In fifty portraits, from Kleist to Kronauer, he delicately unfurls a small history of German literature.
After exploring the treasure-house of modern poetry he leads the reader onto the fertile ground of Eros in poetry, exemplifies why Bambi is pornography and how an anonymous writer reveals himself through a stylistic fingerprint. Anyone who finishes Maar’s book, which is academic but an enjoyable read, will be a different reader from now on – and a better writer. Main rule: "There are no rules, at least you can break them all. But you have to be able to."
"Michael Maar’s book showcases what it is about: the thousand and one possibilities of the German language." Süddeutsche Zeitung
"A great success ... This book is not only an unconventional study of style, but above all an entertaining literary history of style." DIE ZEIT
