Wo ist Emilia

In the mid-1970s, at the art school in Berlin-Charlottenburg, the distinguished Professor Brand, creator of the famous Brand-Antiqua typeface, teaches in the typography department. Gus, one of his students, takes an internship at a printing house during the holidays and learns a lot about the dying craft of metal typesetting. Meanwhile, his eccentric friend and fellow student Moon works as a messenger at Sender Freies Berlin. When Professor Brand seeks two people to fly to the Atlantic island of Hermosa in his place, paid by him, to make contact with an obscure artist named Magno Malente, both eagerly seize the opportunity. The artist had written the professor a strange letter hinting that he knows something about the whereabouts of Emilia, a student of Brand's who had disappeared without a trace years earlier. Gus and Moon set off and encounter a colorful, quirky scene on the island. Malente lives hidden away in a house on a remote banana plantation. Once a week, he teaches interested individuals calligraphy at a cultural center. The closer Gus and Moon get to this man, the more questionable he appears to them. They have no idea what shocking answer awaits them to the question, "Where is Emilia?" Butschkow narrates with pointed humor and partially directly from the "true" everyday life of the time. Gripping crime tension gradually builds up. This novel is also a tribute to typography, specifically to the noble Antiqua, and to the art of writing in particular, offering vivid insights into the microcosm of a partially vanished professional world.