The Desert of Lop Nor

A house on a hill. A room with an oak table and a chest full of small bottles of sand. On the window ledge, a pine cone, a locust, a stone. A small village on the edge of the desert. Once a week Raoul Louper takes the bus to Cairo, and there the stories begin... Stories of the affinities of love, and of the journeys taking him to and from Elif, Francesca, and Arlette. Conversations about ?singing sands?, quicksands, coastal regions and deserts. Time and again, his thoughts return to the three women and the countries where he has lived with them.

Raoul Schrott has written a story in a hundred and one chapters, a novella about three women, half a lifetime, and encounters with the unknown. His narrative is austere and, at the same time, poetic. "Tell me a story,", Arlette had asked him. "What is the most beautiful story you know? Make one up for me, no matter if it's true or not."

"He can make the blue light of Romanticism shine as if it were a will o' the wisp, subtle and erotic. And that is the essence of his art." (Neue Zürcher Zeitung)