This book is about happiness. About freedom. About dignity. And thirty-seven other royal words, known from devotion and advertising, which Navid Kermani shakes up from a literary-historical perspective, dissects philosophically, and coldly throws against the wall – only to ultimately scrape out that tiny bit which can still be poetically expressed without relativizing it. In forty lives, forty hagiographies from Cologne-Eigelstein and the surrounding area, he accomplishes nothing less than a catechism of our time. A joyfully sad, hilariously witty book for reflection, preaching, and rereading. It embodies the narrative joy of One Thousand and One Nights and the linguistic enthusiasm of Thomas Mann.