Translated from German by Tess Lewis
Published by And Other Stories, 2023, 495 pages. Original version published in 2020.

East Germany, November 1989. The Berlin Wall has fallen. Carl Bischoff, a student, is heading home, summoned by a telegram from his parents saying, “we need help please do come immediately your parents”. When Carl gets home, he finds that his parents, Inge and Walter, plan to leave for West Germany and want him to look after their apartment. Their plan is to go to the central transit camp of Giessen and then go into West Germany separately from there because they think it might be easier.

Carl is completely bewildered by this decision, which goes against everything he knows about them. “Weren’t they his parents? With their quiet, daily life organized down to the smallest detail along with a particular love of order and repetition?… It became even clearer to Carl that he basically knew very little about his parents and only carried around a few faded, childish images from the album of his schooldays and adolescence.” They took this momentous decision without consulting their only child, merely informing him once they were ready to leave. Carl then drives them to the border in his father’s precious Zhiguli and leaves them there, with Walter holding on to his accordion, which he insisted on taking with him.

Staying at home is not easy for Carl. He keeps a low profile—the neighbours do not know Walter and Inge have left, and he’s worried that if they find out, they would report his parents’ disappearance to the authorities. However, there is only so much time that he can spend in the flat. One day, he decides he has had enough, locks up the flat, takes the Zhiguli and heads to East Berlin. He initially lives in the car but then falls in with a group of artists, idealists and anarchists led by The Shepherd (aka Hoffi) and his pet goat Dodo. The Shepherd and his group intend to occupy unused buildings in East Berlin so they can give apartments to those who need them.

Carl is still trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. In the meantime, his skill as a bricklayer is welcomed by The Shepherd and his group. Carl becomes an important part of this group and is given an apartment of his own. It may not look like much but to him it represents freedom and possibilities (and a bit of anarchy), something he did not have in his previous, ordered life.

“The sight of his three worn mattresses on the floor, bound together with rope, the broken black-and-white television at the head of his bed and the soot-covered sheets hanging at the window and the coal box near the oven; it may have all been shabby and squalid, but it was full of promise, all these decrepit things…all expressed the future.”

Meanwhile, Inge and Walter are making their way across West Germany. Inge writes to Carl, telling him about her journey. In his responses to his mother, Carl pretends he is still in the family home.

This is a book about a time of transition. Although the Berlin Wall has fallen, Germany is still not reunified, and it is not clear whether the laws of East Germany still hold. Carl is also in a time of transition, finding his way to adulthood. He takes on responsibilities, falls in love, and becomes a poet. (He can sometimes be exasperating. There were times I wanted to reach into the book and shake him.)

The story of Inge and Walter’s journeys is also eye-opening. In leaving, they are realizing a long-held dream, one that they had kept to themselves for a long time. They were determined to make it, no matter what. It wasn’t easy for East Germans to find their place in the new country, and Inge’s letters to Carl reflect this, how they both made their way across West Germany, finding work where they could.

I enjoyed the description of The Shepherd and his pack—the idealism, the energy and the determination to make a difference, to make a better society than the one they were living in. In her afterword, Tess Lewis calls it a “utopian anarchy”. There is humour and warmth, and being a part of this pack is vital to Carl’s growing up. It seems to be the first time that he has ever felt he belonged; his parents, although they loved him, were always a little removed.

This is also a moving story about a family pulled apart, a family that was once a single unit but now has to find a way to come back together again. Carl grows up only when he is able to see his parents as individuals in themselves, as people with lives and dreams of their own.

The title refers to the name of an iconic East German transistor radio, listening to which was a Bischoff family ritual.

The book took me a while to get into, but once I did, I found it a compelling portrait of Germany just before reunification. The fall of the Berlin Wall was such a major moment in history—I still remember watching it on television—but I knew so little about what it was like for people living there at the time, especially in East Germany. Lutz Seiler, in Star 111, paints a vivid picture of the time.

Definitely worth reading.