The silent monkeys of things

Henning has made it - having grown up as a working-class child in the gray Ruhr area of the 1970s, he has made a name for himself as a journalist and literary connoisseur in the circles of the bohemian and educated. His background remains a blemish that he feels needs to be covered up. When his father Walter dies from cancer, Henning feels no sorrow: their relationship was distant, and his father was a stranger to him with no ambitions. At the funeral in Recklinghausen, Henning sees Jochen again, an old childhood friend of his father's. Jochen tells him about their first big trip together: as nineteen-year-olds traveling through Corsica on mopeds. Walter seemed to have been a different person back then. Henning decides to repeat this journey with Jochen and realizes that his perception of his unambitious, dull father is not entirely accurate. A novel about class barriers, the rise through education, the Ruhr area, and the saving power of reading.