At the heart of this unusual book, tracing the "Invention of Life," is the diary of a trip to the Moselle River that Hanns-Josef Ortheil wrote at the age of eleven, revealing how important travel, language, and writing were to the young boy. This impressive document, which serves as a significant continuation of Ortheil's major autobiographical novel "The Invention of Life," is complemented by a description of the same journey that the author undertook decades later. The book concludes with a narrative about why Ortheil repeatedly visits certain landscapes and regions throughout his life. In his autobiographical novel "The Invention of Life," published in the fall of 2009, Hanns-Josef Ortheil tells the story of a mute child in his early years who learns to express himself through language and writing.