I am briefly in Munich, trying to work and not succeeding. What I learned today: Nineteenth century Egyptologists [J-STOR; sub required] thought the djed symbol represented a nilometer, but these days no one is at all sure what it means. Well, that ties up one loose end in the new book. Sort of.
I went to the bookstore though, and found (but did not buy) Die Fliegende Berg, a new novel by Christoph Ransmayr... I also read something by Emine Sevgi Ozdamarwho is a very fine, lucid, thoughtful writer who deserves to be better known; I only wish I had more time to do a proper translation of at least the first piece in Der Hof im Spiegel. Silke Scheuermann is very good also, but her new novel Die Stunde zwischen Wolf und Hund isn't in bookstores yet even though the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is publishing tantalizing bits of it. Grr.
