This novel has evolved from an earlier version of a novel-textbook that I wrote to help my students to achieve a reasonable grasp of German within a reasonably short time, with relative ease and some pleasure in the learning while evoking a sense of accomplishment in the process. At the same time, I tried to cultivate in my students on the course an appreciation of the culture and arts of the German-speaking countries. I hope to be able to achieve a similar result in this novel. To help the reader to make sense of some of the passages and dialogues in German, a translation of each of these can be found at the Appendix (Anhang) part of the book, in which a pool of useful supplementary learning materials can also be found in the Work Book (Arbeitsheft) for the interested reader to do follow up work.