["Die Phantasie"], the last, longest, and most recently written of the thirteen pieces which go to make up this collection, Einstein überquert die Elbe bei Hamburg, is, if not the best, certainly the clearest single illustration of [Siegfried Lenz's] thematic inventiveness that one could hope for in what is still, after all, a shortish story of some forty-five pages. Three writers of differing artistic persuasions meet in a pub and agree to show each other their paces by improvising tales which might explain the presence there of the unknown couple in the corner—their only fellow customers. All three are, of course, Herr Lenz: Klimke, who is "convinced that one can only reveal reality with the aid of the fantastic" …; Gregor, who insists that "invention must always be authenticated by reality" …; and the first-person narrator of the tales' framework, who is accused—justly—of inconclusiveness: "That's typical of...