Description
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015Adaption is everything, something Frau Lohmark is well aware of as the biology teacher at the Charles Darwin High School in a country backwater of the former East Germany. A strict devotee of Darwin's evolution principle, Lohmark views education as survival of the fittest: classifying her pupils as biological specimens and scorning her colleagues for indulging in favourites'. However, as people move West in search of work and opportunities, the school's future is in jeopardy and the Lohmark is forced to face her most fundamental lesson: she must adapt or she cannot survive.
Trade Review“Remarkable” is too small a word. It is very funny, desperately sad and real, and ultimately, shocking *
Eileen Battersby, Irish Times *
An unusual, distinctive novel that informs as well as entertains *
Independent *
A beautiful novel spotted with wondrous sketches *
New Statesman *
A relentless and darkly humorous internal monologue that links ideas in evolutionary biology and genetics to socialist and capitalist notions of progress *
New Yorker *
A subtle, understated book, tension, emotion and dark humour bubbling under the surface, with a melancholic air of retrospection *
Big Issue *
Beyond the agony, Mike Leigh-style, there’s deep, dark laughter here *
Independent *
