Composed as seperate stories, all six of them are connected and constitute variations of one central topic: The lost childhood – forever engraved in one´s memory but never to be returned to, captured in the beautiful metaphor of an insect encased in amber.
Biller tells his protagonist´s tales with affection and melancholy, their yearning for the lost paradise, their dwindled illusions, their hopes that never fade.
There is eight-year old David, witnessing the Russian invasion into Czech, his home country.
Henry, the son of a Jewish gangster in Munich, having to make up an innocent childhood, or Jossi, whose brother joins the Yom-Kippur-War voluntarily and is killed by his own people.
Every one of them knows, he can never return to his childhood but still cannot stop to live in it.
Though highly emotional and empathetic, the stories never seem harmless but instead integrate contemporary elements that add a historical and up-to-date component to this book.
Maxim Biller has written stories of gentle and empathetic prose with great emotionality. An absorbing language and pictures of cinematic intensity make this book a reading experience never to forget. Biller reveals that childhood and youth are the biggest wonders that a human can encounter.
