The woman who is shattered by a lesbian holiday romance - the widow who realizes in a painter's apartment what life could have offered her - the blind woman who has never seen the pictures her friend takes of her - the aging prostitute who looks back on the dreams of her life. Stories of encounters and separations, of love, longing, grief, and loneliness, from which Bernhard Aichner distills the essence: He condenses them into concise, yet all the more precise texts, where every word is perfectly placed, and every sentence resonates. Intense imagery gives rise to atmospheres and emotions, revealing deep insights beneath the surfaces of the people Aichner circles in his texts. The nine prose sketches in "Babalon," Bernhard Aichner's literary debut, reveal the photographer behind the writer: Like images.