This is the European answer to the American Beat Generation writers, young men, ready to change the world, full of ideas but mired in the humdrum of day-to-day living and drug taking. This book is a cult-novel in Germany and has now been translated into English for the first time. Harry Gelb, a writer, is working on a trilogy of avant-garde crime novels. Unfortunately, he also needs some money to live on, pay the rent and finance his heroin addiction. So we follow our hapless hero from dives in Istanbul to squats in Berlin and Frankfurt, struggling to get his book published and trying his hand at various dead-end jobs, all the while waiting for the revolution. Although the book is fictional, it is closely modelled on Fauser’s own life. It is also a fascinating document of the times, the late 60s, all Hippies, Beat Poets and getting stoned, to the darker 70s, the Baader-Meinhof gang and the militant left scene. The writing is fresh, genuine and unpretentious, a brilliant, self-deprecating satire of the underground scene. It's a cracking read and very funny.