Marie-Luise Scherer Der Akkordeonspieler Wahre Geschichten aus vier Jahrzehnten (The Accordion Player: True Stories from Four Decades) Eichborn Verlag, February 2004. 408 pp. ISBN 3-8218-4541-4 Can a ‘shaggy dog story’ be gripping, informative and even moving? The answer is ‘yes’ when it is indeed about shaggy dogs and the writer narrating it is Marie-Luise Scherer. The collection in which it features, sub-titled ‘True Stories from Four Decades’, is a volume of brilliant reportage published in ‘The Other Library’ series co-edited by the distinguished poet and essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger. The shaggy dogs in question are those attached to wires and used to patrol the border between Germany’s two former states. The story describes their miserable existence. It also shows how the procurement of such dogs was bound up with the parallel economy of bartering and dealing that was such a feature of life in the GDR. Marie-Luise Scherer was for many years a journalist on the staff of the news magazine Der Spiegel, and the majority of the lively and still timely pieces in this volume have been taken from that source. The main exception is the 130-page item that gives the book its name. This tells the story of a Russian accordion player, Vladimir Kolenko, who, following the changes of 1989/1990, seeks to earn his living as a street musician in Germany and whose experiences vividly illustrate the atomisation and loneliness so painfully present in German society today. Another story tells the fate of a young girl from the provinces who leaves home to start a new life in Berlin. The account of her mysterious death shows how the world of society’s rebels can be just as cold and uninviting as any traditional form of social existence. Equally chilling is the story of a Paris serial killer who preyed on old women in the 1980s. By contrast most of the other pieces with a French background, such as the gently satirical look at Paris fashion week, are much lighter. This deft collection of essays further confirms the reputation of ‘The Other Library’ as a series that brings together literature of the highest quality. Marie-Luise Scherer is a gifted historian of the everyday, and her beautifully written, sharply observant stories provide an illuminating reflection of our times.