In the book Hauptsache kein Zeitgeist, the present unfolds before us like an intricately woven carpet during a 24-hour timespan.The heroine of the novel, a cosmopolitan and a migrant, practices meditation and self-affirmation, and she is an autodidact in social philosophy, who, at a conference, can’t help but roll her eyes at the sad tropes of the scientists there. She travels to Trieste and meets John, then takes a journey into the past, where she meets with her true self. She doesn’t intend to be a modern person, and yet she is just that.