“Hugely inventive . . . Pleasantly pre-Web – a self-enclosed thing that rewards
another, older kind of multitasking: reading, laughing, and learning.”

— The New Yorker

In which language but German could you construct le mot juste for:

a secret love of bad foods, the inability to remember jokes,

Sunday-afternoon depression, the urge to touch wet paint,

the glee of gossip, the loneliness of cooking for one,

delight at the changing of the seasons, the compulsion to hoard,

or the joy of perfectly slaked thirst?

“Of all people, a Brit who doesn’t speak any German has written the best

and most enjoyable book in the German language in a long time”

— Die Presse