What does a novel do that a shorter narrative does not? With a shark bite, they tear a piece from time, grab a piece of creation, and shape it as they please. In two stages, Sibylle Lewitscharoff takes to the podium to reflect on literature: In the famous Frankfurt Poetics Lectures and the Zurich Poetics Lectures of 2011, she engages with great world literature and key novels of questionable character, dissects character names - "Josef K.: also a damn good name!" - and novel beginnings, rails against mundane realism, and advocates for the appearance of angels and talking animals in fiction. At the same time, looking at foreign works also allows for insights into one's own. Here, the good, true, and beautiful are discussed - educational, polemical, and highly enjoyable.