Random Acts of Heroic Love
Random Acts of Heroic Love (2007) is a semi-autobiographical debut novel by the author and actor Danny Scheinmann. It follows the parallel stories of two unconsciously connected men in two different time eras motivated by the memory of love: Moritz Daniecki, a young Austro-Hungarian soldier captured by the Russians during the First World War and sent to a POW camp in Siberia, who decides to escape in 1917 and walk thousands of miles for the sake of his childhood sweetheart Lotte; and Leo Deakin, who loses his beloved girlfriend Eleni in a bus  crash in Ecuador in 1992, and in his despair embarks on his own journey of discovery and self-reconciliation. The novel is based upon the true story of Scheinmann's grandfather Moshe, who too was an Austro-Hungarian soldier captured by the Russians, and undertook a three-year journey back to Europe to be reunited with his lover, also called Lotte. Leo's grief and bereavement of Eleni also reflect the author's personal experiences when he lost his late girlfriend Stella in a similar bus crash in South America in 1992. The novel was nominated for the Galaxy British  Book Awards in the 2008 reading list of the Richard and Judy Book Club. The author is also currently adapting the book for film. In the novel Moritz is an older man dying of consumption in his home in Berlin (which he caught on his travels and never recovered from) and is recounting his experiences on his deathbed to his son Fischel, whom we later discover to be Frank Deakin.