The giraffe's neck

Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015Adaption is everything, something Frau Lohmark is well aware of as the biology teacher at the Charles Darwin High School in a country backwater of the former East Germany. A strict devotee of Darwin's evolution principle, Lohmark views education as survival of the fittest: classifying her pupils as biological specimens and scorning her colleagues for indulging in 'favourites'. However, as people move West in search of work and opportunities, the school's future is in jeopardy and the Lohmark is forced to face her most fundamental lesson: she must adapt or she cannot survive.