A time when schnitzel, smoking, cars, and pubs were still considered normal. Dietmar Wischmeyer’s first novel.
Wolfgang is a perfectly normal young man in the late 1970s. He studies for a profession he never practises, meets a girl under curious circumstances and ends up staying with her for the rest of his life, builds a house, has two kids. He wastes his evenings in the corner pub with his three friends. A life like millions of others. Working for a company that builds roads and highways, he gets wind of criminal cliques involved in the “German Unification” project, witnessing the daily insanity of road construction. While all this is going on, Wolfgang Schrage tries to lead the life of a normal, regular guy with a family. But he keeps colliding with the outlandish ideas of his three pub pals. When the four drinking buddies come across twelve metal cases, they uncover a secret that will change their lives and cast a new, surprising light on everything that has happened so far.
Wolfgang Schrage tells the tale of his adventurous life in a language that doesn’t hold back, or even considers why you would choose to do so. He talks about cars, streets and roads, and political intrigues, revealing a different kind of witness of the Federal Republic of Germany in its old, post-unification, and new iterations.
