A sad affair

"Set during the heady, pre-World War II days of cabaret-era Germany, the novel centers on the unrequited affair between Sibylle - a stunning seductress who strings along five men at a time - and Friedrich, the callow, melancholic youth who pursues her obsessively. In a series of episodic flashbacks, Koeppen, with a cinematic vividness and intensity that anticipate Beat literature by nearly twenty years, tracks the doomed couple first to Zurich and then to the mysterious streets of Venice. Friedrich is a vibrant comic creation, "an amok runner of love," energetic but inept, modest yet exorbitant - the epitome of a talented, striving young artist. Sibylle, glamorous and indifferent, remains as alluring a femme fatale as Salome."--Jacket.