"A Chocolate Pudding" tells the story of a man born in the early 1920s. After seven years of schooling and an apprenticeship, he volunteers for the Wehrmacht-blinded by the supposed successes of the war. In Africa, he experiences the horrors of war, is seriously wounded, and yet returns to the front months later. There he meets his first great love. He is taken prisoner of war and does not return until more than five years later. A formative experience ultimately leads him to choose a life in the GDR. Over the course of decades, the author traces a life that is both fulfilling and marked by political upheaval-so authentic and immediate that it feels as if time has been turned back for a moment.
