Martin Walser Angstblüte (Blossoms of Fear) Rowohlt Verlag, July 2006, 224 pp ISBN: 3-498-07357 Does making money necessarily make you evil? Are the principles of capitalism and utopianism as opposed as they usually seem? These are only two of the philosophical questions the reader is asked to face in Martin Walser's penetrating new novel. The character round whom all the rest revolve is Kurt von Kahn, who heads his own highly successful investment company in Munich and finances, among other projects, the schemes of his much wilder friend, the art dealer Diego. Everything, from the characters' appearances to the mechanics of high finance are described in minute detail. This works to unexpectedly farcical effect in a bedroom scene between Kurt, aged seventy, and a starlet whose prominent charms are too much for him in every way. Cutting rather than comic is the portrait of Diego's wife Gundi, who hosts a popular Sunday TV programme called Gundi's Guest and whom Kahn, in private, calls the Black Spider Widow. A more tragic character is his ineffectual brother Erewein, a veteran of the Russian front in World War Two who becomes more and more remote and ultimately commits suicide. So many characters, so many details, artfully brought together in a work which many readers will admire.