Readers of Faust, The Master and Margarita and The Angel of the Western Window have long been waiting for the appearance of this novel. And Stefan Heim himself (b. 1913) followed it for almost a quarter of a century, first introducing the theme of biblical stylization in “The Crusaders” (1948), and returning to it in “The Book of King David” (1972). Ahasfer (1981) became the creative pinnacle of the German writer, and gained wide international fame, being published in countries as diverse as the USA and the GDR. Drawing on the European tradition of novels about the Wandering Jew, Heim paints a huge canvas on which heroes of the New Testament, the German Reformation and our days meet.