On love and death

'According to Plato, fools do not strive for the beautiful and the good, for divine bliss, because they are satisfied with themselves. The wise do not strive for it either because they already have those things. Only the people in between, half-way between fools and the wise, you and I and all the others waiting patiently here in a traffic jam for the next green light, are vulnerable to the arrow of Eros.' On Love and Death is a witty and inspiring meditation on the erotic link between the two great forces of human existence. Patrick S|skind provocatively draws on scenes as contemporary as a young couple having oral sex while stuck in traffic, as literary as Thomas Mann's discovery of forbidden love in his seventies, and as mythical as the stirring tales of death conquered through love in the narratives of Orpheus and Jesus.