Friends around Bernhard

Love, friendship, homosexuality, the longing for security, self-discovery - these are the themes of Annemarie Schwarzenbach's autobiographical first novel Freunde um Bernhard. The author, then 23 years old, describes a group of young artists at the end of the twenties in a changing "cast" at different locations: Zurich, Paris, Berlin, Lugano, Florence. The young bohemians are, in the broadest sense, friends of Bernhard, a 17-year-old handsome music student whom everyone loves.