Star 111

Winner of the 2020 Leipzig Book Fair Prize | Longlisted for the 2022 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger | Shortlisted for the 2022 Prix Femina étranger | #1 on the Spiegel Bestseller List | Seiler winner of the German Book Prize November 1989. The Berlin Wall has just fallen when the East German couple Inge und Walter, following a secret dream they've harboured all their lives, set out for life in the West. Carl, their son, refuses to keep watch over the family home and instead heads to Berlin, where he lives in his father's car until he is taken in by a group of squatters. Led by a shepherd and his goat, the pack of squatters sets up the first alternative bar in East Berlin and are involved in guerrilla occupations. And it's with them that Carl, trained as a bricklayer, finds himself an initiate of anarchy, of love, and above all of poetry. 'Seiler tells a story of freedom in a poetically-precise style.' Der Spiegel 'With its ample narrative and powerful imagination, Star 111 is the "Wenderoman" par excellence, the great novel of the "turn", as German reunification is called.' Christine Lecerf, Le Monde des livres