This is a beautiful book about art, ideas, loss, freedom, and love. I am a Schwablin for life, but I feel like this book has such a different tone from her other books without losing her gift for prose and adventure. This truly felt like a book about humanity, rather than what the blurb says about "a Faustian bargain with the devil". That's really only the start of the beauty of this book.

Also most people less heartless than I *will* cry while reading this. Even I got a little misty-eyed towards the end... and that says something.