"I believe," says Peter Bichsel, "the purpose of literature is not to convey content, but to maintain the act of storytelling. Because people need stories to survive. They need models through which they can narrate their own lives. Only the life that one can tell oneself is a meaningful life." And: "I want to oppose stories to history." The world of Peter Bichsel—and thus also the world of his stories in Zur Stadt Paris—is never given, meaning defined and clear, but always open and inviting to anyone who wishes to follow the author's imagination and their own, in search of love, hope, and security amidst the diversity of life. Peter Bichsel points to worlds in which there is nothing, in all that he encounters seemingly by chance at any time of day or night.