Fame

by Daniel Kehlmann

A man buys a mobile phone and starts receiving calls intended for someone else. After some initial hesitation, he begins to play with his new identity. From one day to the next, an actor's phone falls dead silent, as though someone had stolen his life. A writer takes a pair of trips with a woman whose worst fear is to end up in one of his works. A somewhat confused Internet blogger wants nothing more than to become a character in a novel. A detective-story writer goes missing while on a journey through Central Asia, a fictional old woman on her deathbed quarrels with the writer who created...