»We learn so much over the course of our lives, and then, at the decisive moment, at the grand finale, there is so little of it we can actually use.«

Zsófia Bán’s writing is born out of silence. Out of the presence of the untold stories that surrounded her as a child of Holocaust survivors. Zsófia Bán, who made a name for herself with her essays on W. G. Sebald, Imre Kertész, and Susan Sontag, has now chosen the format of a school book to work through her encyclopaedic life experiences one subject at a time, from geography to chemistry to French. In subtly ironic language she tells the story of a scientist who disappeared in the jungles of Laos, of the young Flaubert’s trip to Egypt with his friend Maxime, of the life of a central European woman who was shot to death on the banks of the Danube. But she also manages to smuggle one of the greatest love scenes ever written into her Evening School and concludes her lessons in happiness and perfidy with a fairy tale about the wonderful return of laughter.

The unifying factor in these texts is the desire to explore taboo and absurd subjects in order to learn lessons for life – an eminently intelligent book that delights in telling a good story. Once you’ve read it, the once all-too-familiar world will appear both wild and strange.

»No, my dears, that's not how it works. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should perhaps try to speak, don't you think?«

When There Were Only Animals