Le 35 Mai

The 35th of May; or, Conrad's Ride to the South Seas (German: Der 35. Mai oder Konrad reitet in die Südsee) is a novel by Erich Kästner, first published in 1932. Unlike most of Kästner's other works - set in a completely realistic contemporary Germany - the present book is a work of fantasy and satire. In his preface to the 1929 Emil and the Detectives the narrator recounts that he intended to write a humorous South Sea adventure story, but got stuck with the concrete details and finally followed the advice of a head waiter in his favorite cafe shop to write instead a book set in the familiar Berlin reality. Several of the characters briefly mentioned where Kästner describes his aborted fantasy were taken up in "35th of May", written three years later.