Beat Schneider has done something unforgivable that costs him his marriage to LouAnne. She is an extraordinary artist who relies not only on his love but also on his care. This makes the Japanese bag that LouAnne gave him all the more precious, and he keeps it close at all times. Until he loses it too. Schneider's life, as an original historian uninterested in a career, is under the special protection of his former nanny, whom he calls Alcina, who left him a considerable inheritance after her disappearance. She told him fairy tales, and the dream logic of those tales seems to govern Schneider's life as well. This motif not only connects Adolf Muschg's new novel "The Japanese Bag" with "Sutter's Happiness," but also its main character, the former court reporter Emil Gygax, who is affected by his.