Historically important German novel from the 1920s. Hermann, a lonely office clerk, falls in love from afar with Gunther, a teenage hustler. Their story does not end happily, though it's not tragic, either. Hermann's feelings aren't really love as much as, as Natalia Landauer puts it in Cabaret, ...
He would not last much longer, a blind person could see that. But why should he not be allowed his pleasure? Most of the boys took cocaine themselves, if only occasionally, when they were especially flush. It would never have occurred to anyone to say to him, “Do leave off, Leo! You’re killing yo...