Not every wish has to come true. Even an academic can be happy. For a time, at least. But shortly before his 52th birthday, Stephan begins to be haunted by unusual fears and dreams and besides there is that nagging pain somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. And didn’t his father die of a heart attack at 54?

Stephan decides to take a year off family life and moves into a small apartment in Steglitz, close to Lilienthal park. He needs to take stock of things. And he wants to go to at last, too.

This self-preoccupation takes Stephan not only to the Egyptian desert, but also back into his past. And for the first time he asks about where exactly his father came from. It was somewhere in the East, which never meant anything to Stephan. For him, all that was East Prussia . Or Pomerania . And what was all that business with the son that his parents had had to leave behind when they fled and had looked for in vain for many years? He was, after all, Stephan’s brother.

An unexpected letter stamped prisoner-of-war post motivates Stephan to resume the search for his long-lost brother. But facing the man he believes to be his brother, he realizes that he had not been prepared for so real a confrontation with his past.

In Menschenflug Treichel again tackles the theme of his short novel Der Verlorene (Lost), an international best seller – and tells with masterly lightness of the burden of the past, of Berlin, love and the sky over the Teltow Canal.

Death In Rome