Thirteen-year-old Daniel is not allowed to tell anyone, not even Lucie, the beautiful top pupil, where his father is about to take him: to West Berlin. He is to attend grammar school there, because that is not possible at home, in the small Central German town. The new school director and the pastor warn against visits to his home town: "It's too dangerous, they said, because I've secretly gone to West Berlin. I had betrayed the Republic and was on the list." Using the means of a fictitious autobiography, Christoph Hein tells of a youth in the GDR of the 1950s.