Vielen Dank für das Leben

This is not a novel; it is a manifesto. The world of Toto is a wonder. An orphan without a clear gender. Too fat, too tall, conceived in drunkenness. The father ran away before the birth, the mother soon after. Born in the cold summer of 1966, he wanders through East Germany as if everything still exists: kindness, innocence, love. Why, he 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 him hope - the reunion with Kasimir and singing.