Berlin 1923, Franz Kafka on his daily walk in Steglitzer Park. A little girl is sitting on a bench and crying - she lost her doll a few days ago. Later, his friend Dora Diamant told him how Kafka felt about the little girl: He knew the doll, Kafka said, she was on a trip, but had promised him beforehand to write letters from the journey. A first one had already arrived, and when the girl wanted to come back to the park tomorrow, he would read her the letter. These letters, which had been lost until now, have miraculously turned up with Jürg Amann, who presents them in his new book. There are 13 letters in all, in which the adventurous paths of the doll can be traced: She first arrives in Prague, then in Vienna and Kierling, before losing her way in Switzerland. She encounters all kinds of people who sometimes seem strangely familiar, while others turn up as a mystery and disappear without being recognized. "You will want to do the same thing later: to get away from where you come from. Away. Out into the world. Or into it. Depending on how you want to see it. Leave everything behind you that once was. Even if it has been so good. And even if you don't want to, you will have to. We all have to, when the time comes. And that is good. So that we don't become stagnant. So that we are not already dead in our lifetime. You will see it that way one day. For me, the time was now." Is a conundrum being played here? In any case, Amann's trouvaille is a cabinet piece of a special kind - charming and subtle at the same time. "Amann tells a kind of short and starry-eyed biography of Kafka in a knowingly ingenious way, but also weaves moments of his own self-reflection into the text. It is nice that Amann is also funny in this volume," Janko Ferk, Die Presse, Vienna.