A bestseller in Germany, a panoramic and picaresque novel of the first years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, told through the experiences of a young man making his way in a time of constant change.

November 1989. The Berlin Wall has just fallen when the East German couple Inge and Walter, following a secret dream they’ve harbored all their lives, set out for life in the West.

Carl, their son, refuses to keep watch over the family home and instead heads to Berlin, where he lives in his father’s car until he is taken in by a group of squatters. Led by a shepherd and his goat, the pack of squatters sets up the first alternative bar in East Berlin and are involved in guerrilla occupations. And it’s with them that Carl, trained as a bricklayer, finds himself an initiate of anarchy, of love, and above all, of poetry.

Winner of the prestigious Leipzig Book Fair Prize and a bestseller in its original German, Star 111, musical and incantatory, tells of the search for authentic existence and also of a family exploded by political change which must find its way back together.

Lutz Seiler is a German poet, novelist, and essayist. He was born in Gera in the German state of Thuringia and first developed an interest in literature while completing his national service in the East German army. He has been awarded the 2023 George Büchner Prize, the 2014 German Book Prize for his debut novel Kruso, and the 2020 Leipzig Book Fair Prize for Star 111.

Tess Lewis is a translator from French and German. Her translations include works by Peter Handke, Philippe Jaccottet, and Christine Angot, and a collection of essays by Walter Benjamin for NYRB Classics. She is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2022 Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.