At seventy-six, Martin is devoted to his family life with his young wife and six-year-old son when he suddenly learns that he has only a few months to live. Shocked, he searches for answers, wrestling with his feelings and existential questions about his legacy, the meaning of his love and what can be achieved in the short time he has left. Martin wants to do everything right, but later life is full of surprises and unforeseen challenges that he must face.

Stories about the kind of goodbyes that weigh heavy upon us, and the ones that set us free, about the success and failure of love, about trust and betrayal, about menacing and overpowering memories and how the right thing often comes into the wrong life, and the wrong thing into the right life.
Stories about people in different phases of life and about their hopes and entanglements.
»Love and do what thou wilt« is not a recipe for a happy ending, but an answer for when all other answers fail.

Stories that surprise, disturb, and delight.

The grand new novel by the author of New York Times #1 bestseller The Reader!

This is the story of a woman who fights and finds herself, and a man who dreams and loses himself. Their moving love is entwined with the twisting paths of German history, leading us from the late 19th to the early 21st century, from Germany to Africa and the Arctic, from the Baltic Sea to Southwest Germany.
An intelligent woman fights the prejudices of her time.
A hopeless man loses himself in African and Arctic escapades, driven by the power-hungry dreams of his time. He can only confront reality in failure – like so many of his generation. She remains tied to him throughout her life – in thought, letters and a great rebellion. This is the story of their love.

A novel full of history.