The King of China (Seagull German Library)

About the Book

About the Book When Keith stapperpfennig and his family give their grandfather the trip of a lifetime all expenses paid holiday to any destination in the worldaEUR"their eccentric old man arbitrarily chooses China, and he asks Keith to accompany him. But when Keith loses all the money for the journey at a casino, he goes into hidingaEUR"mostly under his deskaEUR"and his grandfatheraEUR"equally uninterested in actually travelling to chinaaEUR"heads down the road to engage in a similar subterfuge. And it is here that the novel opens, two men in hiding, mere miles apart. But when his grandfather dies unexpectedly, Keith is left to continue the farce alone. With the aid of a guidebook, Keith writes a series of letters home to his brothers and sisters, detailing their imaginary travels and the bizarre sights they see. These start off harmlessly, but before long he starts adding invented details: non-stop dental hygiene shows on television, dog vaccinations at the post officeaEUR"and the letters get longer and longer. Engaging, strange, and ultimately moving, this hilarious novel from tilman rammstedt won him the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2008 and confirmed him as one of Germany's most compelling writers. About the Author Tilman Rammstedt was born in Bielefeld in 1975 and lives in Berlin. He has published three novels and one short-story collection in German.