Tender and cruel at one and the same time, floatingly light and profoundly sombre – this is the world of the Austrian artist Paul Flora. Diogenes first published a book by Paul Flora in 1953, and this was followed by forty others. Flora quickly made a name for himself as a master of the art of hatching, an artist who knows how to create poetic, impenetrable drawings consisting of thousands of fine and ultra-fine lines. This volume of Flora's work is comprehensive enough to be regarded as a retrospective – were it not for the fact that that it contains many new drawings done over the past five years.

In interviews with Felizitas von Schönborn, renowned Austrian artist Paul Flora fully recounts for the first time, with his worldly scepticism and casual pessimism, the remarkable, amusing and profound events that have taken place on his extraordinary path through life.

The themes of Paul Flora's brilliant descriptions include subjects and personalities such as Charlie Chaplin, Saul Steinberg, Alfred Kubin, Kurt Moldovan, Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando, venerable Austrians, authentic Viennese, original Tyroleans and seductive Venetians, adventurers, demons and monsters, monarchs and courtiers, go-getters, heroes and sea battles, art, caricatures and the cinema – a collection from Flora's world previously known to us only through his drawings: cheerful yet melancholy revelations, accompanied by an excellent biographical text.

62 new drawings from the past few years.

A foggy day in Venice, deserted Californian beaches, the ponds of Camargue and the Engadine in winter – Paul Flora takes us to tranquil landscapes conjured up by means of very soft strokes of the pen. In these landscapes are seen solitary human beings, gondolas moving past indifferently, and unhurried riders. In this world, even the crows seem to be merely fleeting apparitions.