This delicious paper ‘Oreo biscuit’ contains an uncompromisingly cinematic report. It is not a book to leaf through. Every page has to be read and examined closely in order to gradually descend, with the director, into the past and reach the climax. Frame by frame, page by page, the story unfolds and we are taken on an interesting visual odyssey: a combination of the reflections on the future by Nazi architect Albert Speer and the reminiscences of Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin in his younger years, with the city of Berlin at their heart. Both the text and the installations depicted (consisting of several scale models) make up integral parts of this work by visual artist Maurice Bogaert. And in spite of the fact that this is a picture book, the text is absolutely essential. A last round of text editing should however have changed the prominently displayed [‘]78 into [’]78, and filtered out a number of unnecessary hyphenations. The printing of both text and images in a hazy silver reinforces the impression of memories being evoked. This also works exceptionally well on the Notturno paper.

We doubt whether the book was bound using cold gluing. The copies received for review had a few blobs on the spine (remnants of glue) and were not exceptional examples of good binding. Fortunately, this was not always the case – nevertheless, it was reason enough to almost exclude the book from the selection.