To the question why he wrote a youth novel with Tschick, Wolfgang Herrndorf answered the following in a conversation with FAZ: I’ve reread the books of my childhood in 2004, ‘Lord of the flies’, ‘Huckleberry Finn’, ‘Arthur Gordon Pym’, ‘Pik reist nach Amerika’ and so on.

During that process, I realized that all of my favorite books had three things in common: a quick elimination of the grown-up attachment figure, long journey, wide waters.

The water was missing, but I had figured out the plot in a couple of minutes.Maik Klingenberg, 14, comes from an affluent but dysfunctional family home in Marzahn, a part of eastern Berlin.

The new classmate Andrej Tschichatschow (Tschick for short), an uncommunicative late repatriate from Russia, who sometimes shows up openly drunk to class, is also an outsider and excluded from Tatjana's birthday party.

A family of five kids, and a mother, who is overtly critical of consumerism, invites them for lunch, which is strictly organic and only handed out to those who can answer a short quiz, which mostly revolves around Harry Potter.

Further down the road, while scavenging a dump for a hose in order to steal some fuel for their Lada, the runaways encounter the tomboyish and street-smart Isa Schmidt.

Maik is then allowed to cut her hair very short and discovers not only her shapely naked upper body, but also that his old love for Tatjana gradually starts to fade away.

They enjoy the delightful nature and romantic atmosphere at the peak, carve their initials into a piece of wood and vow to meet again at this very spot in exactly 50 years.

After welcoming them by shooting them with an airgun, he invites them for a lemonade and tells them about his tragic losses (for instance of his love) and traumatic experiences he had at a concentration camp and at the eastern front.

As a farewell present he forces a mysterious, small bottle with a foul-smelling, but seemingly life-saving liquid, on them, but Tschick throws it out the window of the Lada without hesitation.

The novel ends with the beginning of a new school year and revives its initial motifs: 1) beautiful Tatjana is suddenly interested in Maik's adventure and makes sure that his story gets around the whole class.

2) the alluring Isa writes Maik a letter and wants to visit him in Berlin soon, to pay back the borrowed money and to make up for the lost kiss.

together, crouch on the bottom of the pool, hold their breath, glance upwards and rejoice over the two police officers, who were alerted by the neighbours and in bafflement bend over the bubbling surface of the water.

Herrndorf has his protagonists explain the adventurous journey to this point in a long flashback in the style of a road movie, whose antics cover the space of a week.

By using his wonderfully balanced, simple language, which unobtrusively refers to a real youth jargon without naturalistically copying it, he manages to shift his world into obliqueness and lets it appear as young as its protagonists.

‘Authentic’ would be the right word, if it didn’t disguise the fact that Herrndorf is a great stylist and a genius with words.Why We Took the Car was published as an audio book by Argon Verlag, which is read by Hanno Koffler and contains 4 CDs (total length of approx.

An act version of Why We Took the Car, edited by Robert Koall, was premiered under the direction of Jan Gehle at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden on November 19, 2011, and has been part of the repertoire since then.