Stefan Sommer: Trabant

Debut novel

Is his father dying that night or has he been exposed as a former East German spy? Did his parents commit suicide together or are they lying on the beach in Madeira? Or did he just make it all up?

On this late summer night, anything seems possible for Georg Himmel. When the young man receives a text message at his best friend's wedding in an Istrian grand hotel, which his father probably intended to send to an affair, a long journey begins for him. Georg gets into the old Corsa and drives off to intercept his father at Munich airport in the early hours of the morning to prevent the family from breaking up.

But is there anything left to save? Are the parents who he always thought they were? Or is that what he wanted them to be? Georg traces memories, tries to find clues to cracks in his parents' marriage that he has overlooked. He confronts his fears and fantasies, his loneliness, his disappointments.

Between highway service stations and detours, "Trabant" tells of hope, hesitation, rage and fear, of gliding silently through the black night, of arriving and a big surprise.

Stefan Sommer, born in 1989, grew up in a small Swabian community. Even as a small child, his grandfather predicted that he could only become a priest or an actor. It turned out similarly, but differently. The thirty-four-year-old author now lives in Munich and works for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Bayerischer Rundfunk. He writes reports and essays about pop music, society, body politics, Harry Styles, climate activism and dating portals for anti-vaccination activists. Awarded the "International Music Journalism Award" 2020 in the category "Best music journalistic work under 30", the "Ernst Schneider Prize" for business journalism 2021 and a literary scholarship "Young Art and New Paths" 2021 by the Free State of Bavaria.