The Ape's Party

Writer, "instant poet" and master of ceremonies – Peter Hammerschlag was one of the most original contributors to the Berlin and Vienna cabaret scene of the 1920s and 30s. His scurrilous poems are classics of black humour – and in his prose work, too, Hammerschlag remained faithful to the grotesque, (self-) ironic humour that made him a "forerunner of H.C. Artmann and Helmut Qualtinger but also of Robert Gernhardt", as Profil magazine noted recently.

Collected from diverse magazines and the archives of the Austrian National Library and illustrated by the author, these poignant and witty "footnotes of world literature" depict the squalid charms of the show and fashion world, the opportunistic imitators of the American Way of Life, and the eternal battle of the sexes.