An epic picture of German society – from the GDR to the present

Sanditz, a small town on the edge of the republic: home to ageing officers, civil rights activists, local journalists, early retirees, mousy archivists and the Wenzel family. In this warm-hearted novel told from multiple perspectives, Lukas Rietzschel intertwines the lives of a family with those of the inhabitants of Sanditz to create a panoramic view of German life stories – from the occupation of a Stasi headquarters to the grinding drudgery of working on West German construction sites. The SPIEGEL bestselling author gifts us a novel about new beginnings and decline, success and failure, friendship and family in times of monumental change. 

  • Lukas Rietzschel’s novels and plays have been awarded numerous prizes, including the Gellert Prize, the Saxonian Prize for Literature and the Text & Language Literature Prize
  • For readers of Eugen Ruge, Uwe Tellkamp and Jonathan Franzen
Genre: Fiction, Literary Fiction
Lukas Rietzschel

Lukas Rietzschel, born in 1994, lives in Görlitz. His debut novel 'Mit der Faust in die Welt schlagen' was released in 2018 and became a bestseller that was turned into a stage play as well as a film. 

480 pages, ISBN: 978-3-423-28516-2
First published 2026