Das Leben ist kurz

Planned or by chance, here they come together, people from all corners and ends of life: a painter arguing with a friend about the structure of a still life (pebble and coral, butterfly, pearl and pigeon's egg); a boy on a bicycle, happily racing along as if out of time; a lover of wine who, on her deathbed, finally has the precious bottle she has been saving for decades brought to her; a man in front of a crack in the curtain of a changing room, spellbound by the experience of the crack first filling with a warm shade, then with rounded shapes, then with dark lines - of a leg?, of an arm? -which move back and forth before his eyes, "slowly and swimming like a catfish at the bottom of a river". The miniatures in this book capture the world in moments. They are narrative splendour in the smallest of spaces, leaving scenes and.