Ostend

Stefan Zweig arrives with his lover Lotte and the typewriter, Joseph Roth arrives despite the ban on schnapps to take a holiday with his best friend and to write. He falls in love one last time: with Irmgard Keun, who just wanted to leave the land of book burners. As strange as the friendship between the millionaire branch and the gifted drinker Roth is, so surprising is the love between Roth and the young, passionate Keun. More writers are coming to Ostend. Sun, sea, drinks it could be a holiday among friends. If the political situation did not deteriorate daily, if they were not all persecuted, their books would not be banned, if they had not lost their homeland. There are poets on the run, writers in exile. Precise, knowledgeable and captivating, Volker Weidermann tells of this summer shortly before the Second World War, in which Zweig, Roth and Keun once again celebrate life as only the desperate can.