Can a person constantly change without losing himself? He was not yet thirty, yet he had lived several lives. He experienced a childhood in extreme poverty, shame for his origin and sexual orientation. He ran away from the village to the city, where he tries to distance himself as much as possible from his roots even as a teenager in grammar school. He wants to find a new identity even later at the universities of Amiens and Paris. As a writer, he experiences unprecedented success, enjoys media attention, constantly travels and talks about his life. The attention and recognition is addictive at first, after all, this is exactly what he dreamed of. But gradually he gets tired and disgusted with his own life, he would like to run away from everything again and continue the endless transformation of himself.

The deeply personal and moving novel is the literary star's biggest work since the publication of Ending with Eddy B. Critics and readers alike have hailed it as a remarkable return by an author who has something to say and doesn't spare himself.