Leaving Sardinia — Hans-Ulrich Treichel

Albert is an ordinary young man, strangely ordinary. He goes to the pool and pokes a hole in his newspaper so he can watch girls in their bathing suits. He sees female genitalia in great works of art, including the crucifix. He obsesses about his mother. He finds himself in ridiculous situations involving men dressed like women. But at the heart of this tale of a man at loose ends is Elena, the beautician from Sardinia with whom he falls in love, at least until he gets to know her. For a while she has a Persian boyfriend who is married, which bothers Albert, but not enough to break things off. It is only when he moves with her back to Sardinia, where she fulfills her dream of having her own salon, that things fall apart and Albert, eyes perhaps more widely opened at last, faces up to his future. In this stumbling, sympathetic hero, Hans-Ulrich Treichel has perfected the postmodern hopeless romantic. The result is a truly original, deeply funny novel.