A novel about war and money, about life and love, the struggles and conflicts in an upside-down world where chaos reigns - a world book and a snapshot of the times that leaves nothing out and strikes all the chords on the literary keyboard. Thomas Mann called this first major novel in the German language a "literary and life monument of the rarest kind," in which it is "colorful, wild, raw, amusing, in love, and ragged," "boiling with life, on familiar terms with death and the devil." Everyone knows the title character and the name of the poet - yet almost no one has read the monumental book, as the author's baroque German has become nearly inaccessible to us.