DON’T ASK FOR SUGAR is a spiritual and humorous love, crime and spy novel, that only real life can write. Learn from the dearly paid missteps of a globetrotter in the Australian desert and from his risky trips to Asia, until you regain your consciousness in an East German prison cell after a stopover in Moscow.

BUT FIRST THE YEAR IS 1985, Christoph is in Bangkok and has just fallen madly in love with a beautiful New Zealander woman who has been touring the world for years. In Western Australia, the two have a challenging but happy life. Christoph, who struggles along as a garden helper for lack of a work permit, admires the experienced Suzanne, who works as a well-paid model at Perth’s university. One weekend in a small chapel, the future is predicted for the two of them. The fortune teller says, that Suzanne will soon be living far to the south, but when she holds Christoph’s hand, the seer begins to tremble and sees dark forces and sinister demons. Shortly afterwards, Suzanne is offered an extraordinarily cheap plane ticket to New Zealand, and as she hasn’t been home for a long time, she makes a spontaneous decision, whereupon the world falls apart for Christoph, as he loses the love of his life.

A FEW DAYS LATER Christoph pulls himself together, sells his car and hitchhikes through the middle of the Australian desert to get some fresh ideas from new impressions. After three weeks in New South Wales, he meets Dave, an Australian, and Bryce, a Scotsman, who have been in a car accident. Pulling the mudguard out again, the three young men decide to drive north for two days because the small coastal town of Cairns on the Great Barrier Reef turns into a party hotspot at the end of the year when divers from all over the world wash up on its beaches along with jellyfish, but can Christoph forget his Suzanne just like that?

CHAPTER 1/69

EAST BERLIN, JULY 21, 1987. Today I’m celebrating my 26th birthday, but it’s dripping down from the ceiling like in a stalactite cave and dogs are barking outside. Sadistically inclined socialists are keeping me trapped in a dark, damp cellar hole, it’s freezing cold, I’m hungry and all my joints ache, however, somewhere behind this tiny, barred frosted glass window must be my West Berlin apartment. Suddenly a shrill scream and rapidly increasing footsteps, until my  massive door slams against the wall with an infernal BOOM and a flash of lightning tears the night apart! …