Pan Děsikůň v růžové pavučině – von Herzmanovsky-Orlando Fritz (2025)

Mr. Děsikůň in the Pink Spiderweb is the first work in the truly explosive Austrian Trilogy by Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando, which explodes with humor, zany ideas, and surreal humor on every page. The love story of the quest for a milk tooth takes place in Biedermeier Vienna among court dwarfs, befuddled officials of the imperial offices, women and girls caught up in alluringly horrific erotic fantasies, and collectors of fantastic trash - and it ends, of course, tragically, without the reader ever stopping to laugh.
Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando (1877-1954), Austria's secret literary weapon, was a generational peer of all the famous Viennese of the early 20th century, who are now counted among the peaks of world literature, yet he never achieved their fame, neither in life nor after death, which was certainly due to the fact that although he wrote and drew much during his lifetime, he published little (similar to Franz Kafka). The relationship between Herzmanovsky-Orlando and all his more famous contemporaries is this: take Schnitzler, Musil, Freud, Kraus, Zweig, Hofmannsthal, Altenberg, Friedell, and Kafka, get them drunk, drug them, send them to dance at a wild candrbál - and you have Herzmanovsky.