Summary
Karl-Markus Gauß: Capital in the forest
*The book was owned by the library.
To travel, to go somewhere, to leave your everyday life and experience something in the modern world has become an obligation. But there are few travelers who can observe the world around them, and even the smallest departure, with wide-open eyes. There are few who see what most do not, armed with foreknowledge and brave enough to actually travel without prejudice. Karl-Markus Gauß, one of the greatest contemporary European essayists, a traveler who does not carry with him a beedeker, but an encyclopedic knowledge, visits current and former metropolises, but he is most interested in the capitals of the spirit. And wherever he goes, he questions and writes down and discovers forgotten or lost people and objects. It doesn't matter whether he takes us to Vienna or Brussels, to Belgrade or Kočevje, to Silesia or Sicily, to squares, churches or libraries - in every passage, history and the present collide and writers and politicians smile at each other.
The recipe for Gauß's writing is seemingly simple; it has a little bit of everything: travels, cultural history, anecdotes, personal experiences, and dark unknown details, but only a real chef and gourmet knows how to put all of this in the right proportions and how to make a superb dish from simple ingredients - In the capital forest is a literary Kaiserschmarn and a superb delicatessen wine.
"A book of discoveries and unearthed traces, an autobiographically based cartography Europe... An irresistibly attractive read."
Ilma Rakusa
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