Wie Grischa mit einer verwegenen Idee beinahe den Weltfrieden auslöste

He is highly motivated and determined to devote his efforts to socialist progress. But at first, there is one thing above all else in his department: nothing to do. Yet he ignores his supervisor’s instruction to practice the art of waiting. He reads, calculates, thinks—and develops a plan for economic cooperation with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Afghanistan needs goods from the GDR. The GDR needs foreign currency. And Afghanistan has an agricultural product that officials would rather not discuss too openly. A bold idea becomes a project, the project becomes a working group, and the working group becomes a pilot project. Soon, not only the State Planning Commission but also border troops, ministries, West German authorities, and top political circles are grappling with a question for which no one was prepared: What happens when an absurd idea suddenly works?

Jakob Hein, born in Leipzig and raised in East Berlin, has a special gift for this kind of historical absurdity: he takes the grand systems seriously enough to reveal their humor. In his novel, history isn’t corrected, but tentatively reassembled. A German-German comedy about files, border crossings, and high politics. About an idea that works too well. And about the question of whether world history sometimes arises not from conviction, but from jurisdiction, chance, and the wrong person at the right desk.