Born in Prague in 1882 and raised in Vienna, Leo Perutz was one of the most widely read storytellers of the German language during the interwar period. He was a regular at the famous coffeehouses, and his witty remarks found their way into the cultural sections of the "Neuen Freien Presse" and the "Berliner Tageblatt," whose chatter he despised, much like Karl Kraus. The Hamburg Perutz specialist Hans-Harald Müller now presents an excellent biography, which, however, cannot fulfill Perutz's request: "Write nothing about me and everything about my novels.".