The Dream Room — Marcel Moring

Set in the 1960s, The Dream Room is the story of a family's dissolution, as witnessed through the eyes of twelve-year-old David. An only child, he is fascinated by the culinary arts -- making the family's dinner nightly and reading cookbooks as if they were novels and novels as if they were cookbooks -- content to simply spend time with his mother and father, a pilot during World War II who is now an unemployed engineer. One long, rainy summer, they work together building model airplanes for the toy shop beneath their apartment to support themselves -- their only means of survival. But although times are difficult, David is happy, for his family has never been so close and life has never felt so secure. But his peace is shattered by an old family friend, whose appearance will destroy everything David holds most dear and irrevocably alter the course of his life.

Intelligent and philosophical, The Dream Room is at once an entrancing family history, love story, and fairy tale that confirms Marcel Möring's reputation as one of the great literary talents of his generation.