Sommerhit

Tom Liehr's "Sommerhit" follows Falk Lutter, fourteen years old when he and his mother escape from East to West Germany after a family vacation at Lake Balaton in 1980 — the rest of the family left behind. Transplanted into a West Berlin school, Falk experiences a sharp culture shock among his new classmates, and reinventing himself as "cool" becomes his own private summer hit, one that carries him through dance floors well into the 1990s.

Twenty years later, a class reunion brings the past back into view. Falk, now going by Martin Gold, returns as someone who appears to have finally gotten what he wanted — but the reunion forces a reckoning with who he really became along the way. Balancing comedy and melancholy, the novel is as much about homesickness and being an outsider as it is about ambition, family, and friendship.