Five modern fairy tales about people who live in their images of life rather than in life itself, who prefer familiar limitations to the unpredictable consequences of cognitive gain, and who would rather bang their heads against the wall than take a good look at themselves – people, in short, like you and me. Arjouni writes about such people, simply and amusingly, with intelligence and melancholy.

In Arjouni's stories, life hardly ever obeys the rules: everything happens differently and takes unexpected turns. A theatre producer signs up a hitch-hiker to play the part of an old school friend because he does not want to be regarded as a work zombie by his colleagues. An old recluse finds more than just peace and quiet in his rural retreat. And it takes a bank robbery to make a man who has married above him come into his own. Gamblers and losers, daydreamers, mercenaries, and people who pull off coups: Arjouni's stories are full of surprise encounters in very different milieus.

What a silly coincidence: Berlin's currently most hated man, fast food millionaire Horst König, trips right in front of Eddy's apartment door of all places. For the last thing that Eddy needs is the attention of the police. After all, he is a likeable trickster who finances his lifestyle by fleecing well- to-do people as well as a musician, complete with a bourgeois façade on Berlin's Kreuzberg with its leftist community. Although Eddy initially handles the situation well, the story soon gets out of control. The Horst König case develops into Berlin's major media event. Eddy is troubled by a bad conscience and tempted to explain all misunderstandings – especially to König's beautiful and eccentric daughter Romy.
›Holy Eddy‹ is a story about the disappearance of one of Berlin's big businessmen, about gossip journalists, a city going wild – and about the world's most wonderful scent.

Valerie de Chavannes, a financier's daughter, summons private investigator Kemal Kayankaya to her villa in Frankfurt's diplomats' quarter and commissions him to find her missing sixteen-year-old daughter Marieke. She is alleged to be with an older man who is posing as an artist. To Kayankaya, it seems like a simple case: an upper class girl with a thirst for adventure. Then another simple case turns up: The Maier Publishing House believes it needs to protect author Malik Rashid from attacks by religious fanatics at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Rashid has written a novel about, amongst other things, attitudes towards homosexuality in an Arabic country. Kayankaya is hired to be Rashid's bodyguard for three days. The two cases seem to be straightforward, but together they lead to murder, rape and abduction. And then Kayankaya comes under suspicion of being a contract killer for hire.

Pleading his own case: German teacher Joachim Linde is well aware that something is amiss in his life and in his family, in light of which the trouble he has recently been experiencing with his students appears almost secondary. And now he cannot avoid going into the embarrassing details of his private life in order to save his skin. But Linde is determined not to let the situation get on top of him. This is a story about the apportioning of blame, both private and historical. 'Homework' is the tale of a man's attempt to straighten things out with himself - and the tangled web of wishful thinking and half-truths that results.

It all begins with a favour to a friend. Kayankaya's and Slibulsky's sole intention is to help restaurant owner Romario to get rid of two thugs who are blackmailing him for protection money. Then, suddenly, two strange, white-powdered bodies are found in Romarios's restaurant. Kayankaya cannot stop thinking about the bodies. He embarks on a search for their identity – and finds himself the victim of a search. By a Mafia gang about whose origins and leader no-one is sure. The only certain thing is that it is the most brutal and uncompromising group of gangsters ever known to have operated in the Frankfurt red-light district. ›Kismet‹ is about organised crime and war profiteers, about the stupidity of nationalism and the madness of the war in Yugoslavia, about »home« in the best and worst senses of the word. And about the longing for a great love. An unusual and rousing story, with precise, colourful milieu descriptions, breath-taking dialogue, fantastic wit: Jakob Arjouni at his best.

The world in the year 2064. Overpopulation? Famine? Religious wars? Dictatorships? On the contrary. At least, not in the Eurasian and North American regions. Securely fenced off from the rest of the world, life in these areas, with the exception of a handful of suicide bombings and regular border disputes, is constantly improving. Nowhere more so than at »Chez Max – German Cuisine«, a small, top-quality restaurant located in Paris' eleventh arrondissement. Its customers are, however, not only served fine food, but carefully monitored, their conversations overheard – because Max is not only the restaurant manager, but also an Ashcroft agent, a member of a secret government organisation whose mission is to promptly identify and weed out anything that may threaten the political status quo. Max leads a full and orderly life, oscillating between professional success and social commitment. The only spanner in the works is his Ashcroft partner, Chen Wu, a self-righteous loudmouth, who leaves no taboo unbroken, attacks every human weakness and takes liberties at will - all because of the spectacular successes he has achieved within the organisation. Until the day that Wu's own weakness is revealed and Max sees an opportunity to get rid off his partner once and for all.