This book tells two stories that may or may not ever directly intersect (at one point, I thought there was a direct link...but I think that was a misread), and that gambit alone is pretty interesting. But both stories are also arresting. I only wish I could read it in French because I suspect based on the translator's (Charlotte Mandel) couple of footnotes that there's a lot there in the language prior to translation. Much like Erpenbeck's Kairos (though set earlier than that one), it made me wish I knew a bit more about the history of East Germany but also taught me some of that history.