 Compared with existing children's literature at the time, its most unusual aspect was its realistic setting in a contemporary Berlin peopled with some fairly rough characters, not in a sanitized fantasy world; also that it refrained from obvious moralizing, letting the characters' deeds speak for themselves.Emil was the first name of Kästner's father.The story begins in a provincial German town called Neustadt, home to 12-year-old schoolboy Emil Tischbein.