Der Scheik von Aachen

Anita Jannemann puts everything on one card for her great love Mario. She quits her job in Zurich and moves back to her hometown Aachen. There she regularly visits the old Emmi. Anita is shocked when her aunt harshly claims: "You don't love Mario at all." A clever and entertaining novel about what moves us when we idolize or demonize others. The antique dealer Marzahn, where Anita finds employment after her return, is a deeply cynical person. This is precisely why he is so fascinated by Anita's rapturous naivety for the amateur mountaineer Mario. Obsessed, he tries to explain love to her in all its shades between tragedy and ridicule. Also the stories that Anita tells her aunt every Saturday afternoon in the style of Wilhelm Hauff's cycle "Der Scheik von Alessandria und seine Sklaven" (The Sheik of Alessandria and his slaves) to distract her aunt.