At the end of the 1980s, a writer on a book tour, who very much resembles Grass, passes through East Germany and visits the Cathedral of Naumburg with its famous twelve donor statues. He invites the sculptor’s models to dinner—and they come, not as ghosts, but as they were when alive in the thirteenth century. Toward the end of dinner, after drinking an icy Coca-Cola, the model for the famed beauty Uta von Naumburg declares she has to go to work: a living statue.
As he continues touring around Europe, the writer looks for Uta and her donation basket outside every cathedral he passes. At last, in Frankfurt, he sees her in front of Deutsche Bank and the two have a meeting with staggering consequences. As Grass said, “on paper everything is possible,” and in this tale he gleefully erases the line between life and death, present and past.
- ISBN10 0811238105
- ISBN13 9780811238106
- Publish Date 1 October 2024
- Publish Status Forthcoming
- Publish Country US
- Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 48
- Language English