Der Schildkrötenpanzer

Tino is approaching forty but hasn't achieved anything. He flunked the university entrance exams, and his career as a tram driver ended on his first day of work with a psychotic episode. Since then, he has been drifting through life, supported by psychotropic medication, without any goals or perspectives. Occasionally, he attempts to participate in training programs offered by the employment agency, but he drops out of all of them. He is deeply reclusive, avoiding encounters and demands of any kind, content to watch the live stream of a Swedish aquarium in his one-room apartment.

Movement enters his life when, on his way to buy beer at the supermarket, he encounters a woman and a small girl. The four-year-old girl overwhelms him with her curiosity, causing Tino to run away and seek refuge in a thrift store. In his helplessness, he allows the pockmarked owner in a trench coat to sell him the shell of a giant turtle along with a bag of books. Tino drags home what will become one of the central motifs of the novel: the shield of which he is now the turtle. However, the bag of books brings new dynamism to his life. He begins to retell the stories he immerses himself in, integrating them into his own life. Suddenly, figures like Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, and Jane Austen appear in his messy apartment as well-worn guardian angels of plot development.

"The Turtle Shell" is a richly entertaining novel with an unmistakable message: Write your own story! And above all, live it!.