We owe Siegfried Lenz a debt of gratitude for this poetic book. Perhaps it is his finest. Marcel Reich-Ranicki

A warm summer by the Baltic Sea many years ago. Benny Goodman and Ray Charles are still in vogue, the street organ grinder plays in the alleys, payments are made in marks, and when the English teacher steps in front of the upper class, everyone stands up: "Good morning, Mrs. Petersen."

How the love between Stella and Christian came to be, how passion must measure itself against reality, and how suddenly everything comes to an end - and yet not really. How love becomes immortal precisely through death: Siegfried Lenz tells this with masterful empathy, with distance and humor. In the theme of transience, the decay of earthly love, and the impossibility of perfect happiness, the melancholy of a Theodor Storm resonates. In the laconic style of storytelling, one senses the existential hardness of an Ernest Hemingway. And yet, here speaks the sympathy and integrity of the narrator Siegfried Lenz, who unfolds a question of humanity in the concise space of the novella, a question that remains ever relevant.

"Late summer images, in a language cast like amber." Andrea Seibel, Die Welt.