In the age of Sex and the City, when Manhattan has been elevated to the Mecca of the world, Wolfgang Hermann prefers to wander through the red-light district, immigrant quarters, bad neighborhoods and the docks. Hermann's readers are confronted with homeless people, immigrants and the poor. Other people and their stories abound in his writing, although Hermann's poor flaneurs are not granted the privilege of merely strolling and observing, for encounters play a particularly pivotal role in his texts. With an introduction by Mark Miscovich.