LORELEI

"Oh, all beauty must die / gone: Lorelei."

People from the Rhine. Some engage in wild discussions, while others have short conversations about the search for and discovery of happiness. There is the widow who wants to take a big step and open a motel. A motel in which, in her opinion, things can be a bit daring. There is the journalist who is hunting for a mysterious seal man in Asia. In his quest is Motte, the runaway. "Try camping alone in the city where you've always been." She finds it strange and sings about her hometown, Bonn, and a beautiful girl from elsewhere who could possibly provide inspiration for a poem, a hometown poem that could become world-famous and boost tourism potential.

Wherever they are, wherever they strive, in the end, they persistently locate themselves along the Rhine. They help us discover the fantastical in the everyday and playfulness within seriousness.

"Andreas Stichmann is a specialist in stories that teeter on the edge of the fantastic, where the boundaries blur, but the center is all the clearer ... It has style and humor." FAZ

"It is the transitions and subtle shifts that define the different facets of his prose... Andreas Stichmann ventures far beyond conventional realism." FAS