In 21 diary entries, the aging Johannes Wacholder depicts the lives of his neighbors in Sperlingsgasse, a small side street near the Berlin Palace. At the center is Wacholder's tragic, yet failed love for Marie, the wife of his friend Franz Ralff. Wilhelm Raabe wrote this autobiographically tinted novel between 1854 and 1856, while he himself lived in downtown Berlin. With its constantly shifting perspectives and its erratic narrative style, the work is considered one of the earliest German-language representatives of the urban novel.