In the collection, Nothing’s Lost several short stories evoke the atmosphere and motifs of the author’s world-famous novel, The School at the Frontier. The resemblance doesn’t stop at actual experiences like The Drugeth Legend or Apagyi, in fact, the mood in most of the novellas, written between 1938 and 1946, is defined by the war looming ahead and the destruction it brings about. The young protagonists of the stories try to love and create amid the horrors of the time. Behind the visible stories, behind the love and the issues of the intelligentsia history is a forceful presence. The Embankment shows an unforgettable image of the war-torn city of Budapest, while the last story, Nothing’s Lost from 1968 brings about a shift in Ottlik’s narrative technique: for the first time, he combines the dialogue-based classic short story full of twists and turns with an atmospheric style and the motifs based on free association add poetry to the story built on the logic of remembrance. The elliptical form breaks the flow of the text and adds a moment of silence every now and then.