A rich book. A completely dark rogue novel. Joachim Kaiser in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Unmarried man with an incurable disease seeks child, preferably a toddler, for adoption. When physicist Dr. Benedikt Waller, known simply as Waller, places this ad, he lives only for research - everything human, especially love, is foreign to him. Shortly thereafter, seven-year-old Valerij and his mother Marja stand at his door. Almost against his will, Waller soon experiences all those normal human emotions that make life what it is.