With great empathy and unvarnished realism, very direct and unmistakably poetic, Christine Lavant's prose approaches the fates and inner worlds of her characters. With a formally dreamlike certainty, Lavant tells of what she knows best: of wounded child and female souls, of the subtle and less subtle social differences, of poverty, illness, and exclusion, of forced conformity, bigotry, and violence, but also of the liberating power of love and imagination. The second volume of the four-volume collected works presents all twelve stories published during Lavant's lifetime in newly edited form, as many of the first prints had been altered by others. In addition to her first two book publications, 'Das Kind' (1948) and 'Das Krüglein' (1949), the volume includes 'Die Rosenkugel' (1956).