I have become invulnerable. I have bathed in dragon's blood, and no lime leaf has left me defenseless anywhere. I cannot escape from this skin. This is the conclusion of the first-person narrator, a doctor at a hospital in East Berlin, childless and divorced. She recounts what seems to be an entirely normal life as a woman, yet behind the cool, brittle facade, the fears, mistrust, and frustrations become visible, mercilessly separating her from the world, from herself, her own childhood, and from Henry, her friend who lives in the same high-rise and remains a stranger to her until the end. Hein tells a brutal and suggestive story of loneliness and lack of relationships in East Germany in the early eighties. With the novella "Der fremde Freund," published in 1982 and released in the West a year later under the title "Drachenblut," Christoph Hein achieved his literary breakthrough.