Das Ideal des Kaputten

In this volume, which includes an explanatory afterword with an essay by Carl Freytag, there are five stories by Alfred Sohn-Rethel that explore the confrontation between humans and nature: in the form of not fully domesticated animals (a donkey, two rats, an elephant), the primal force of Vesuvius, and the gentle yet unstoppable decay of things produced as commodities by synthetic society. Three of the stories are set in Naples during the 1920s, while two take place in post-war Britain, where Sohn-Rethel lived after his emigration in 1936 until he returned to Germany in the 1970s to conduct research and teach at the university.