The rock crashes through the windscreen and kills his mother instantly.
Kai (11) survives the accident, and in a state of shock decides never to be dependent on anything or anyone ever again. Thrust abruptly into maturity, he flees from the overtaxed first-aiders and takes refuge in the woodland bordering the road. The next day he chances upon a goat, and shortly afterwards a down-at-heel circus family. Then he meets Samantha, who was part of the group of teenagers that threw the rock from the motorway bridge 24 hours earlier.
Two years later, Cecile, a seventeen-year-old cocaine addict, moves in with her new boyfriend – who happens to be Kai’s father. Kai, now thirteen, is still in love with Samantha, and together with Cecile he sets off in search of her.
Fast-paced, witty and radically irreverent, Helene Hegemann describes the quest for love and redemption in a shallow, frenzied world.