"In 1647, as the Thirty Years' War was drawing to its close, a group of poets from all parts of Germany gather at the pilgrimage town of Telgte, for the purpose of strengthening the last remaining bond within a divided nation: its language and literature. They meet and part in disarray, yet manage to discuss their manuscripts with all the liveliness of friendship and force of rivalry, against a background of brutality and anguish ... The fictitious meeting of 1647 is the replay of a real meeting of German poets and writers, known as Group 47, at the end of another devastating war three hundred years later"--Cover.