Finding life through writing: Hanns-Josef Ortheil's great new novel about a childhood in Wuppertal in the post-war years At the end of the fifties, six-year-old Josef moves with his parents from Cologne to Wuppertal to a house full of railroad workers' families. He is a strongly introverted loner who would prefer to play only the piano. He had to drop out of school in Cologne, and in his new home he is making a second attempt. When he meets Mücke, the daughter of the greengrocer across the street, a close friendship develops between the two children, which helps him to overcome his inhibitions. Gradually, he also opens up to other people, such as the Fathers of the Order of the Cross, who teach him to read aloud and sing aloud, or a youth coach who trains him in cross-country skiing. But the strongest support for him is writing down stories about suspension railway flights along the Wupper, expeditions with bizarre animals in the zoo or adventurous fights with youth gangs in a nearby forest area. Hanns-Josef Ortheil tells a touchingly intense story of internal and external reconstruction in Western post-war Germany. "Schwebebahnen" is the story of an initially autistic boy who discovers his own fantasy worlds carried by music. At the same time, it is the great panorama of a deeply traumatized society, in which people lead a quiet life marked by the Second World War and still act fearfully in the face of another threat of war.