At fifty the good Buddhist takes to the road, leaving all his belongings behind. His sole possession is a begging bowl. That’s how it should be. The problem was, there were four million dollars in my begging bowl and the mafia were after me. It was their money. They wanted it back, and they also wanted the girl, the woman who was with me: Sonia Kovalevskaya.

Not only a thriller about murder and big money but also a powerful evocation of the cruel history that binds Russia and Germany.

Gunter Ohnemus, born in 1946, lives in Munich and writes novels, essays and translations. This is his first novel to be translated into English.