The narration begins shortly after the publishing of the death notices, when the father visits the mother's flat, where she raised Edgar without a husband.

Although Edgar is already dead, he makes long monologues on the things his friends mention, addressed to the reader.

After Edgar's death at the age of 17, his father wants to know who his son was and begins interviewing people who knew him.

After an argument with his apprenticeship supervisor, Flemming, however, he rejects authority and leaves his hometown of Mittenberg and, with his friend Willi, moves to Berlin, where he feels he can be free to follow his own desires.

His co-workers Addi and Zaremba dream of a revolutionary invention, a nebula-free paint duster, but fail to put their plan into practice.

He was an honest child (didn't participate in tricks) and a good pupil, because his mother raised him like that after his father left the family when Edgar was 5.

He is described as a person who is, by conviction, decent to the point of boring, and makes a loving companion to Charlie; Edgar respects this, while rejecting such an attitude for himself (as Werther did) as never capable of real greatness.

The house painter is very diplomatic and often solves arguments by singing Communist songs loudly.

Plenzdorf wrote the novel using the East German (DDR) youth slang of the 1970s and "montage" or "collage" techniques, changing the registers of the narration and composing it as a medley of tape transcripts with excerpts of Goethe, dialogues of Edgar with the other characters and Edgar's commentary on his life; while the main character compares himself with Goethe's protagonist, he mocks Wether's travails and models his personality rather on The Catcher in the Rye.

[1] The novel became a major success for the author, becoming translated into 30 languages and being sold more than four million copies, with the main character becoming a cult figure.

[2] After the release of the novel, the author adapted it into play, premiered on 18 May 1972 in Halle (Saale), being a big success in the DDR.

Edgar becomes an "outsider" for the political regime because of individualist values and being "unable to follow the socialist path of the steadfast.