The Paradise of Doctor Caspari

For ten years, the Viennese biologist Franz Wilhelm Caspari has been researching the supposedly extinct butterfly species "Calyptra lachrypagus" on an island in Indonesia. In and around his house and garden, which was made available to Caspari by a mysterious private individual, he breeds the tiny moths, whose diet consists of human tears. In order to obtain these, Caspari is not only an onlooker at all the island's funerals, but also tries in a cunning way to get friends and acquaintances to come and collect tears. Andrea Grill achieves amazing things in her novel: she transforms processes of natural science into a novel full of wit and sensuality.