Patients refer to their lung sanatorium as "Mottenburg," where everyone suffers from the same illness, all having the "moths." One of them is eight-year-old August, who lost his mother while fleeing from East Prussia and would be lost himself if it weren't for Lilo. Lilo is seventeen, beautiful, daring to stand up to the head nurse, and when Lilo says his name, it sounds different than usual. More than sixty years later, the memories of that time are still vivid, allowing August to flip through them like a picture book. In 1976, "Kindheitsmuster," Christa Wolf's major autobiographical work, was published. Thirty-five years later, she brings a character from it to the forefront of her new narrative: we meet young August again, reading about a difficult childhood marked by war and illness, but also about a fulfilled life.