Sunny

A summer that shapes a lifetime: the great novel by bestselling author Karin Kalisa. Before Jon can finish school, she closes the chapter on him. He is out. And Sunny, whom he longs for like he has never longed for anyone before, does not reach out. Under the scorching sun of a summer that feels like a century, he wanders through the forests on the outskirts of Berlin and stumbles upon the hidden buildings of the former youth academy of the GDR – and Benno, who once found the love of his life here, Alemee from Ethiopia, and was expatriated because of that love. After many years in Africa, he has returned alone to a country that has become unfamiliar to him. Jon and Benno become companions, helping each other to see their life paths not as downhill slopes. Sunny and Alemee, around whom their thoughts endlessly revolve, blend into the glaring present like mirages on the horizon of a stilled time. But then, a battered Japanese Jeep, freshly brewed coffee from Sidamo, and some exceedingly happy bureaucratic errors in Berlin suddenly bring movement to everything that seemed stuck. A love story as coherent and beautiful as a mathematical puzzle. Karin Kalisa tells a coming-of-age story in which the summer heat sometimes blurs the line between the real and the unreal. Her revealing gaze on the strange school system and a little-known piece of German history is completely real.