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Crazy  ~ Benjamin Lebert

About the book: A cult German bestseller about coming-of-age in a boarding school in Neuseelen for 16-year-old disabled newbie and his misfit friends. Flunking his fifth school in a row, young Ben Lebert (ooh, that’s the author name too) and clique embark on an alcohol-and-sweet fuelled getaway to Munich in search of life and meaning. They find an old drunk and a strip club … pretty close then. Some references to Stephen King, so maybe partly inspired by The Body (filmed as Stand By Me) but Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye surely takes most of the blame for the flat tone and characters’ ennui. Tries so hard to make worthy observations about growing up that it forgets to allow its characters to do so.

About the author: The author writes for the youth section of Munich newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung. He was 16, the same age as his protagonist, when he wrote this debut novel.

Critical response: ‘A beautiful book about someone grasping freedom for the first time’ Guardian

Passage that came back to haunt the author:

“Literature is where you read a book and feel you could put a little mark under every line because it’s true.”

“Because it’s true? I don’t get it.”

“When every sentence is simply right. When it reveals something about the world. And life. When every phase gives you the feeling that you would have behaved or thought exactly the same way the character in the book does. That’s when it’s literature.”

Rule of Thumb:Down-turned thumb – show no mercy … stab the book, stab it!