This monumental novel from one of the greatest chroniclers of postwar Germany, masterfully translated by Isabel Fargo Cole, interrogates with bitter wit and singular brilliance the detritus of twentieth-century life: addiction, consumerism, God, statelessness, and above all else, the writer's place in a 'century of lies.' C. is a wretched grump, an anguished patron of bars, peep shows, and train stations. He is also an acclaimed East German writer. Dogged by writer's block, remorse, and national guilt in the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, he leaves the monochromatic existence of the GDR for the neon excess of the West. There at least the novelty of his origins grants him easy money and minor celebrity, if also a deflating sense of complacency. With his visa set to expire and several relationships hanging in the balance, C. travels back and forth between two Germanys, contemplating diverging visions of the world and what they mean for people like him: alienated and aimless witnesses to history.