Kokoschka's Doll acts as a symbol and metaphor for a story of friendship, a story of how the Other is fundamental for our own identity. The characters include Isaac Dresner, a Jew who developed a limp in his left foot, after he was burdened with the memory of his best friend being killed in front of him during World War II. The reader is also introduced to Bonifaz Vogel, a man with a suspended conscience, Tsilia Kacev, an Orthodox Jew who gets stigmata, and a millionaire, Zsigmond Varga, who wants to weigh the human soul, measuring evil and sin with a hydraulic scale. Music is a constant in this story, which also includes defeated poets, a man who is too kind, Kokoschka's doll itself, and a guitar player who classifies people under chords: bearded philosophers, for example, are diminished seventh.The author won the European Prize for Litearture in 2012 for this work.