Innerfar & Bluff, or the Southern Cross

the long version

Innerfar, Gerhard Kopf's first novel, describes the life of Karlina Piloti, an eccentric poet and friend of writers, who vanishes into madness. Piloti is based on Ilse Schneider-Lengyel, the real-life hostess of the first meeting of the tremendously influential postwar German literary group, Gruppe 47. Innerfar thus supplies the reader with insight into the workings and nature of that enigmatic association of writers, which observes its fiftieth anniversary this year to considerable attention in Germany. Bluff, or the Southern Cross is a simple story about liberation and the unshackling of the imagination, a story about friendship between the young and the old, about the importance of dreaming of far-away places.