As the Iron Curtain starts to fray, a young man falls under the spell of a charismatic outsider

Lutz Seiler was born in 1963 in Gera, Thuringia, and today lives in Wilhelmshorst, near Berlin and Stockholm. Since 1997, he has been the literary director and custodian of the Peter Huchel Museum. His many prizes include the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, the Bremen Prize for Literature, the Fontane Prize, the Uwe Johnson Literary Prize 2014, and the German Book Prize 2014.