Read What Germany is Reading: “Tschick”
By Julia Kupper
Hyped as one of the best German books in the last ten years, Wolfgang Herrndorf’s “Tschick (Why We Took the Car)” is a young-adult novel about an unusual friendship between Maik Klingenberg, a 14-year-old middle-class boy from a broken home, and Andrej Tschichatschow (aka “Tschick”), a recent young immigrant from Russia. The two “borrow” an old Lada – one of the only car brands available in the former GDR and manufactured in Russia – and take off on a road-trip odyssey through the wilds of the former East Germany.
The German version was published in 2010 and won the German Children’s Literature Award (Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis), a prize sponsored by the German Federal Ministry for Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. The English translation was published by Scholastic in 2014. The novel was also turned into a movie; “Tschick” released in German movie theaters in September 2016. Sadly, Herrndorf committed suicide in 2013 after he was diagnosed with cancer.
The book is available in English and German on Amazon.
More information about the movie: www.tschick-film.de