Judith Schalansky is a wholly original writer whose books articulate perfectly what she wishes to say. Each of the pieces, following the conventions of a different genre, considers something that is irretrievably lost to the world, including the paradisal pacific island of Tuanaki, the Caspian Tiger, the Villa Sacchetti in Rome, Sappho s love poems, Greta Garbo s fading beauty, a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, and the former East Germany s Palace of the Republic.

As a child of the former East Germany, it s not surprising that the dominant emotion in Schalansky s work should be loss and its aftermath, but what is extraordinary is the thoroughly engaging mixture of intellectual curiosity, down-to-earth grasp of life s pitiless vitality, ironic humour, stylistic elegance and intensity of feeling that combine to make this book a masterpiece and one of the most original and beautifully designed books to be published in 2020.

Translated from the German by Jackie Smith