The Dream of Walacek

The famous Swiss-German painter Paul Klee painted his work Alphabet I (1938) on the sports page of the Swiss newspaper National Zeitung. The letter O of the alphabet fell on the name of the centre forward Genia Walacek, half-erasing it.

This painting is the starting point and also the axis around which the novel The Dream of Walacek revolves. Starting from this coincidence, the author интertwines two fates: that of the "unusual" painter Paul Klee, who, pressured by the Nazi regime, left Germany and took refuge in his homeland, Switzerland; and that of a once famous, and today almost forgotten, footballer Genia Walacek, whom Klee saved from oblivion.