Content:

“One of the most exhilarating books in years!”

Mariana Leky places the big issues of love and death in a small village. Luise, the narrator of the story, aptly summarises the situation: “I am twenty-two years old. My best friend died because he leaned against a door in a regional train that wasn’t closed properly. Whenever my grandmother dreams of an Okapi, someone dies afterwards. My father thinks that you can only become real in the distance, so he travels. My mother has a flower shop and a relationship with Alberto, the owner of an ice cream parlour. The optician loves my grandmother and won‘t tell her. I’m training to be a bookseller.” This is the explanation Luise offers a young Buddhist who appears in the village unexpectedly – and sets about turning “the whole expanse of life upside down”…