synopsis:

Eduard hoffman, a molecular biologist living in West Berlin in 1983, keeps a notebook entitled "A Concise Treatise on the Average Half-life of Love Relationships". The data he collects in it support only one conclusion: a strain of separation virus is raging in the walled city which terminates every relationship within three years, 167 days, and 2 hours. With his friends Andre, an international composer, and Theo, a writer from East Berlin, Eduard makes a pact to fight the "dragon of separation" that seems to reign in Berlin. The man who fails to show up in a year with his current partner will finance an entire ski vacation for six people. Eduard vows to father six children with Klara; Andre, to marry Esther; and Theo, to have no connubial contact with his wife, Pauline. Of course nothing turns out as expected.

As Eduard attempts to evade the virus, he tangles with Germany's Nazi guilt, memories of his father, a wayward mouse, and other threats to his identity in a divided country.

on this book:

in 'couplings' german novelist Peter Schneider takes a satirical look at life in Berlin just before the Wall came down and turns his eyes on the difficulties of love in the peculiar construct that was preunification Berlin.