Bad Sheep

West Berlin in 1987: Soja, a trained typesetter, refugee from the GDR and occasional florist with a big heart, meets Harry, a tall, free, quietly determined man with an unfathomable past and a sombre future – and henceforth they share each others fates.

Years later, all that’s left is an exercise-book with undated entries, eighty-nine sentences, to be precise, in which Harry wrote down what was on his mind while he was with Soja. Many topics are mentioned, one is missing: Soja. She sets out for the task of telling their mutual story and filling the blank spot which was left behind by Harry. She remembers the man who impresses her with his decidedness and wins her heart with a childlike kiss – and whom she tries to court from then on with all her might and against all reason.

In spite of his taciturnity, Harry gives away some information: ten years in prison after an armed robbery, released on probation, violated terms of probation when giving up on his drug therapy, in need of a new type of care, otherwise immediate threat of new term in jail. And this doesn’t make Soja angry, but gets her going instead: She organizes a new therapy, obliges her few friends to support this with complete, uninterrupted assistance, but still ignores all the hints that Harry concealed a number of things from her. And indeed, it does not take very long before the next bomb goes off.

With this long-expected novel, Katja Lange-Müller reaches out for the reader’s heart: With fine empathy, gruff humour, and an underlying tone of melancholy she tells us how an unhappy love affair can be the happiest time in somebody’s life.