• Schweizer Buchpreis 2012 · Shortlist

Vielen Dank für das Leben

“Many Thanks for Life” (title translated by AI)

Sibylle Berg (born 1962)

English editions

No English yet

No English translation found yet.

Toto is a miracle: an orphan of no clear sex, too fat, too tall, conceived in drunkenness. The father ran off before the birth, the mother soon after. Yet Toto remains untouched. Born in the cold summer of 1966, Toto wanders through the GDR as if everything still existed: kindness, innocence, love, tenderness. Why, Toto wonders, do people make this life even more terrible than it already is? Toto goes to the West, where capitalism destroys what socialism let rot. Only two things give hope: seeing Kasimir again, and Toto's one talent, singing.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

400 pages in the original

Genres

Satire, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

Germany, 1966–

First published

2012 by Carl Hanser Verlag

Author's age

50 when first published

ISBN

9783446239708 (original)