This hilarious and poignant novel follows a twenty-year-old drama student who attempts to bridge the gap between the bizarre physical demands of his training and the rigid, alcohol-infused rituals of his grandparents' upper-class home.
When the young protagonist is accepted into a drama school in Munich, a lack of housing forces him to move into his grandparents' magnificent villa. He finds himself living a double life: by day, he is humiliated by teachers, forced to roll on the floor, act like a machine, or channel the inner essence of a hippopotamus. By night, he returns to the "Pink Room" of the villa , entering a world frozen in time where his grandfather, a distinguished philosophy professor, and his grandmother, a former diva, maintain a strict, disciplined existence fueled by daily rituals of champagne and whisky. As the protagonist struggles to find his voice on stage—often failing spectacularly to cry or laugh on command —he becomes the fascinated observer of his grandparents' glamorous yet fragile decline.
The novel masterfully juxtaposes the chaotic, physical search for a "self" in the theater with the dignified, structured fading of a generation that valued form above all else.
