A Sad Affair

Wolfgang Koeppen´s first novel was published in Germany in 1934, and promptly banned. It is an almost entirely truthful account of his obsessive and unavailing pursuit of Sibylle -real name Sibylle Schloss, now in her nineties and living in New York- a young and determinedly promiscuous cabaret actress, working in Erika´s Mann Peffermühle in Zurich. With its heady, stream of consciousness prose and rapid cuts and flashbacks, its milieu of poverty-aspiring-to-decadence, and its cast of young characters, A sad affair forms an unlikely bridge between the literary novels of Thomas Mann, and Beat writing, twenty years later. Sibylle, a careless but not heartless beauty is an unforgettable creation, as is the author´s tender caricature of himself as Friedrich, a gentle whirlwind, "the lover running amok".