As always, Siegfried Lenz remains to be one of the few authors whose short stories I enjoy reading. The setting of the village Suleyken provides enough context for the short stories to work with just a few expositional sentences (and, my word, are they great sentences!) and the general tone of village life adds enough humor for the reader to laugh out loud while reading about chronic reader, an ill-fated train, enthusiastic vaccinations, an epic stand-off between rivals - the list goes on.
Much like Der Geist der Mirabelle (which I, hailing from Northern Germany, could relate to a bit better), Lenz meticulously crafts a microcosmos that can only exist in a small village.