The arrival of thirty Syrians fleeing their war-torn homeland is about to unsettle life in the sleepy Bavarian town of Bad Berneck. Twelve-year-old Fhamed Osman unwittingly becomes the centre of the town's disruption, armed with an irrepressible resilience, a mischievous sense of humour and a second-hand ten-speed girls' bike. His German classmates, unfamiliar with his name, soon give him one of their own-Flemwad-which Fhamed, blissfully unaware of the joke, adopts as his own. His mother, Arishma, is trying to rebuild a life after the devastation of war. His father, Adil, is determined to prepare his son for a world he believes will show him no mercy. The local churchgoers, trying their best to welcome their new neighbours with Christian kindness, are about to discover that helping others can create unintended consequences in the lives of those doing the helping. Then there is a supermarket worker struggling with a loss she has never recovered from; a music teacher whose life is about to take an unexpected turn; and a mayor with a few secrets of his own. As their lives become increasingly entangled with the Syrian boy, friendships form, old wounds reopen and carefully constructed worlds begin to unravel. Funny, tender and occasionally outrageous, Flemwad follows an unlikely collection of people whose lives are changed in the most unexpected ways by a young Syrian refugee on a pink bicycle.
