“The law is the law, but the law is also an ass.”
Chapter 1: The Professor’s Isolation
Richard, a recently retired classics professor in Berlin, finds himself adrift in his new life of leisure. He observes African refugees staging a protest in Alexanderplatz, but their struggles feel distant from his orderly world. His academic detachment begins to crack as he notices their resilience.
Chapter 2: The Hunger Strike
The refugees’ hunger strike forces Richard to confront his ignorance about migration policies. He researches European asylum laws, discovering their brutal contradictions. A chance encounter with a refugee named Rashid sparks his curiosity about individual stories behind the headlines.
Chapter 3: First Interviews
Richard begins interviewing refugees at a temporary shelter, treating them like research subjects at first. Their testimonies of crossing the Mediterranean and surviving Libyan camps unsettle his academic distance. He learns about Apollo, who watched his brother drown during the journey.
Chapter 4: Bureaucratic Walls
Richard accompanies refugees to government offices, witnessing how Kafkaesque procedures erase human dignity. He helps Tristan navigate paperwork that could reunite him with his family, only to see hope crushed by arbitrary rules. The professor’s frustration with systemic indifference grows.
Chapter 5: Private Lives
Flashbacks reveal Richard’s failed marriage and childlessness, mirroring the refugees’ severed family ties. He invites some men to his lakeside house, where cultural barriers slowly dissolve over meals. Rashid confesses his terror of deportation to a country he barely remembers.
Chapter 6: The System Fights Back
Authorities disperse the refugees to remote towns under Germany’s “residence rule.” Richard tracks them down, delivering supplies and legal contacts. He witnesses how isolation policies breed despair—one man attempts suicide after being separated from his support network.
Chapter 7: Small Acts of Resistance
Richard teaches German using Homer’s Odyssey, drawing parallels between ancient and modern displacement. He helps Apollo appeal his deportation order by documenting PTSD symptoms. The professor realizes his notes have become testimonies rather than research.
Chapter 8: The Limits of Help
Despite Richard’s efforts, most refugees face deportation or indefinite limbo. Rashid disappears after his asylum claim fails. Richard confronts his own privilege when offering money can’t fix structural violence. The lake house becomes a temporary sanctuary for those awaiting fateful decisions.
Chapter 9: Transformations
Richard abandons academic detachment, testifying at hearings and writing op-eds. He recognizes how European prosperity depends on African suffering. In the final scene, he shares a silent meal with Apollo—now bonded by mutual grief and fragile hope.
Key ideas
- The dehumanizing bureaucracy of immigration systems
- Academic privilege versus lived experience
- How trauma reshapes identity
- Europe’s complicity in African displacement
- The power of small human connections
Who should read this book?
- Readers interested in contemporary European migration crises
- Those exploring how privilege shapes perception
- Fans of introspective literary fiction
- Advocates for refugee rights
- Anyone questioning systemic injustice