Before Max came
Before Max came there is a novel by the Vorarlberg ( Austria ) author Michael Köhlmeier , published in 1998 by Piper Verlag GmbH, Munich .
In this book he dedicates himself to the Viennese coffee house , a great old Austrian literary motif and Viennese myth .
action
In the first-person form , 55 stories are told by a Viennese coffeehouse writer and what happens in the coffeehouse while he waits every Wednesday for his friend Max, who never appears himself. While waiting, he usually drinks a big black man and eats a few Frankfurters and he always meets various other acquaintances who tell him about incidents from their lives, including what has happened since the last meeting, what oddities have happened. They write poetry, invent or report to him and he also to them. For example, the fat Caligula tells how he himself became a lifesaver as a prevented suicide; 46-year-old ex-swimmer Rita, who would have run away from her husband in London without a passport, money or English skills and almost become a millionaire; Jetti Lenobel on her late grandmother's mysterious love letters.
Each of these encounters lasts exactly four book pages and all these stories and fates gradually blur and become one big story.
annotation
The individual stories in the novel “Before Max came” were printed in the weekend supplement of the Austrian newspaper “ Der Kurier ” from March 1997 to May 1998 with slightly modified text .
ISBN 3-492-04065-9