From Wuppertal to Rome, the highly talented poet Peter Ka travels to give his best at the renowned German Academy Villa Massimo. The scholarship lasts for an entire year in this strangely isolated cosmos, where for over a hundred years artists of all genres have been working from studio door to studio door. Hanns-Josef Ortheil, once a scholarship holder at the Villa himself, observes and accompanies the highly sensitive word fetishist during his months in Rome, experiencing alongside him the secrets of a often hilariously absurd daily life filled with ecstasy, zeal, megalomania, and petty internal debates. A satirically sparkling and Rome-obsessed novel about the passion for finding the perfect word for the extraordinary.