Title: Fremdes Gefühl
First published: 1994
Description: Benedikt von Wallerstein, an ascetic mathematician, had always eschewed human company, preferring calculations to emotions. But with the onset of a debilitating illness, Benedikt suddenly longs for a child. His advertisement seeking a boy for adoption is answered by Valery, an impoverished Russian refugee, and Marja, his mother, an unkempt, energetic pianist. With this unlikely pair, Benedikt undergoes a hilarious, agonizing sentimental education.

Against the background of a Germany swollen by reunification and corrupted by its economic miracle, Marja learns the Teutonic virtues of cleanliness and order but teaches Benedikt the seductive disorder of love, jealousy, and loss.
Subjects: Fiction, Mathematicians, Germany, fiction, Fiction, general
Places: Germany