Das Windei (The wind-egg) was one of Elsner's last novels: it's a rather heavy-handed satire on the aspirations of West German capitalist consumer society. Heiner Wurbs, whom we first meet as a schoolboy in the 1940s, is the archetypal victim of the system, a man with the muscles of a Greek god who knows no way to measure his own worth except by acquiring real-estate, consumer goods and fashionable friends. His tragedy, of course, is that he isn't very good at it: he believes the propaganda, scrapes and saves and ruins his life to make mortgage payments, and is left with little but negative equity to show for it.

There are some very funny moments, and some sharp bits of satirical observation, like the TV interview in which a journalist tries to persuade the Bundeskanzler to explain exactly what the "self-correction mechanism of the free market" actually is, and the scene where a bankrupt businessman invites his friends to a last dinner in the old home but doesn't have anything but radishes and herb-tea to offer them. From time to time, you get a strong feeling that this was someone on very much the same wavelength as Günter Grass. However, Elsner doesn't seem to be able to step back far enough from her political agenda to give the book some perspective, and the result feels a bit clumsy. She is constantly hammering away at the same point, as Heiner fails as a home-owner, a landlord, an employee, an entrepreneur, a husband, an adulterer, a consultant, a son, and a keep-fit enthusiast.

Interesting, but probably not the book on which someone who was obviously a very interesting outsider should be judged as a writer. ( )