The German Tobias Linderoth, 33, works as an investment banker in London. He loves his job – the rapidness, the excitement and the required intuition. He is an expert for oil and gas companies and currently prepares an enormously important business trip to the Ukraine. When he arrives in Kiev, the people plead for the Orange Revolution. As cafés are too expensive for most, life takes place in the streets. The inhabitants stroll along the boulevards or take a walk in the metro stations when it rains.
That is where Tobias meets Larissa, a talented clarinetist who cannot afford to pay the bribes it takes to be accepted at the conservatory. Like many other Ukrainians she still lives in a three-room-apartment with her family at the age of 23. Tobias realizes that Larissa is different from him and from every woman he met so far – still he is drawn closer to her and falls in love with her. He still has to find out how difficult it is to love somebody from a completely different world.
Ronald Reng´s novel portrays a marriage between East and West in an empathetic, gentle but unsparing way. Their marriage should be natural in today´s global society but it is not at all treated as a matter of course. Sceptically observed by friends and strangers, Tobias and Larissa have to prove to themselves and to the world that their love is real.
Ronald Reng, born 1970 in Frankfurt/ Main, lives in Barcelona and works as a sports commentator. His debut Der Traumhüter (2002) about the goal keeper Lars Leese became a bestseller in Germany and received the award for the best sports book 2004 in Great Britain. He has last published Mein Leben als Engländer with Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 2003
