Skarabäus

Stunning literary debut featuring a strong protagonist who is both a loser and a winner.

His father, a secret agent, reconstructs the division of Germany with the family in order to buy the GDR. He attempts to escape from this bizarre prison. When the escape succeeds, he ends up in hell. This is a true experience, whether you believe it or not.

The name Rittersgruen is a burden. The 1000-year-old noble family of Rittersgruen and Täuber participated in the Crusades, saved Frederick the Great's life, and fought in both World Wars and the Cold War. They are warriors and heroes. Friedrich Rittersgruen is eight years old and one of them. After a court hearing in 1978, Friedrich learns that he will be separated from his mother Amalia and his younger sister Beatrix. In place of his mother comes not only Wilhelmina, his father's new wife Praetorius, but also a secret society that is renewed on New Year's Eve at the Rittersgruen home in Neuried near Munich. Three godfathers are assigned to the completely disturbed and overwhelmed Friedrich, who has long decided to escape from the family prison established by his father. For he bears not only the historical legacy of the family, which is cluttered and obscured by art from around the world, a unicorn, the Holy Grail, and the chess set of a crusader, but also the abuse from his stepmother. Father Praetorius turns out to be a spy for the BND, "the good guys," while simultaneously writing doctoral theses under another identity for a Romanian dictator couple and being on the payroll of two intelligence agencies, all while despotically ensuring that his son never has his own money and, above all, can never come into contact with his biological mother and the little sister who was relinquished in the divorce. Breathlessly, we follow Friedrich, the protagonist and literary alter ego of the author, through this.