He has the heartless eyes of one loved above all else

More about the book

In his literary texts, regardless of their length, Alexander Kluge says what needs to be said in the most succinct way possible. He notes his texts down on plain A4 pads in order to dictate them afterward. In this notebook, he outlines, in the space of a few lines, the emotional state of a woman named Gesine, who is unhappily in love with a man who has long since lost interest in her, if he was ever interested at all. She can't get away from him. She suffers and is consoled by her best friend--the first-person narrator. Kluge's syntactical austerity in the description of emotional entanglements, the objective, distanced style of a more or less documentary character, gives rise to a precise consolidation of complex subject matter. Thus, out of only one portrayed instance, an entire life unfolds. -- Publisher's description