Das Pfingstwunder

The place is splendid, the atmosphere tidy: renowned Dante scholars from all over the world meet in the venerable Hall of the Maltese on the Roman Aventine, overlooking St. Peter's Basilica. The focus is on the Divine Comedy, Dante's realistically imbued insight into the world after death. One of the eager debaters is Gottlieb Elsheimer, a Frankfurt Romanist and, in his own opinion, a candidate for purgatory rather than paradise. For all his passion for the subject of research, the increasingly exuberant behaviour of his colleagues seems to him to be strange and odd. When the church bells ring at Pentecost, an event of an incomprehensible nature is looming. Light-footed and eloquent, the Büchner Prize winner Sibylle Lewitscharoff walks with us through hell and heaven. The leading roles in her new novel play the greatest comedy in world literature,...