In Ernst-Wilhelm Händler's The Absolute Enemy, a writer is given an unusual assignment: he is to write about the highly successful Berlin gallerist Georg Voigtländer, and find out why he became a gallerist after spending five years in a California psychiatric ward. At Voigtländer's invitation, the writer attends the Art Basel art fair in Hong Kong and the Armory Show in New York – where the gallery is always represented – and the Venice Biennale. He becomes acquainted with the unusual Voigtländer family, and in Italy sets out on the trail of the painter Schelchshorn. The latter is apparently of great non-commercial importance to the gallery, but is now being courted by a mega-gallery. The writer does everything he can to understand the gallery owner, but the man becomes no less mysterious. Is he making his life a work of art?
"In Händler's novel, it is the spheres of art and literature that wage an epic battle" - Welt am Sonntag, Richard Kämmerlings
"He demonstrates what only language can do, what makes literature incomparable and indispensable." - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Rose-Maria Gropp
"Dealer guarantees novel art at the highest level." - Deutschlandfunk, Christian Metz
