CRAZY

An amazing debut: a fast, funny, wry autobiographical coming-of-age novel by a sixteen-year-old — a runaway bestseller in Germany that is causing excitement everywhere.

"Hi folks, my name is Benjamin Lebert, I'm sixteen, and I'm a cripple."

This is the narrator introducing himself to his class on his first day at a remedial boarding school (he's been thrown out of four schools already), where he's trying to pass ninth grade and maybe even graduate from high school. However, most of his education takes place after hours: with five other kids who rapidly become a gang of friends, Benni is hot on the trail of the Secret of Life — which involves everything from raids on the girls' dorm, booze, first sex, and rock 'n' roll to going out on the sly to a Munich strip club.

Fresh, full of energy, unsparingly self-aware, here is a teenager learning about what friends are, what girls are, how you make the best of the hand you've been dealt, and how you find your way in a crazy world by just being your crazy self.

Benjamin Lebert was born in Freiburg in 1982 and has lived in Munich since he was eight. He writes articles for the young-adult supplement of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich's leading newspaper.