In a fantastic-realistic epistolary novel, the author writes to Günter Grass, asking both him and herself plenty of questions: sometimes playful, sometimes stern, always open to surprising answers. And tongue-in-cheek, she draws parallels between his life and her own. Discovers differences and similarities.

Suddenly he is there. Uncalled. Irrefutable. Günter Grass, the landlord at one time. To look into her pots. While she is lost in thought, cooking in his kitchen. This is the beginning of a fictitious conversation between the author Carmen-Francesca Banciu and the Nobel Prize winner, in whose house she finds herself for a few months at the time of the pandemic:

Why did you move to Wewelsfleth of all places, to a place hardly anyone knows! Or can any place be significant and mysterious, once you become curious and start paying closer attention? And so the letter writer sets out to explore the world village - the cemetery, the bakery, the shipyard - and to ask the dead and the living about their history. To rummage through church records. To discover near forgotten traces. To ask the rare pedestrians in the deserted alleys of the village: Did you know Günter Grass? She thinks he is a graphomaniac, until she herself sits in his study, at his desk, looks through the window at the graves opposite and thinks about the Flounder, the immortal Ilsebill or a dancing chair.

Voices about Carmen-Francesca Banciu and Ilsebill salzt nach:

The reduced language, the idiosyncratic punctuation, the staccato of the sentences accord this formally composed book its own rhythm, its musicality - and even place some of its passages between prose and verse.

– Judith Leister, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Further information

Author: Carmen-Francesca Banciu