A multi-layered and engaging novel by one of Germany's most important contemporary novelists and a fascinating journey into German post-war history. Like in Am Beispiel meines Bruders Timm takes real life characters like Alfred Ploetz - who coined the term "racial hygiene" - and asks big questions about the quest for alternatives to the status quo while at the same time painting a vivid picture of a country destroyed by war and an inhuman ideology and telling a moving story of a young man at the beginning of his life.