Summer 1972. Antero Congéra, a fifteen-year-old student, decides to join his father, a worker in Germany, and spend his school holidays in a different way. Antero is the typical teenager of his time, a mix of contrasts, doubts and certainties, which lead him to be arrogant, touchy, sometimes racist and naive, weak and sensitive at the same time. In the journey he undertakes he sees more than anything an opportunity for adventure, but the reality he will face, in Leverkusen, will make him discover that the life of an emigrant is often made up of degradation, hardship, marginalization. He immediately bonds with Evaristo, Sardinian like him, and with Orantes, a young Turk, with whom he spends his free time, between shopping malls and clubs. However, the meeting with a German girl, Rebecca, with whom he falls madly in love, will soon cause the world of pseudo-certainties that Antero has carved out around his young life to crumble. Between hilarious situations, dramatic episodes, and plans hatched to make the “krauts” pay for their insensitivity towards foreigners, Antero will soon learn that existence is much more complex than he could have imagined. The Gardens of Leverkusen, a picaresque novel with a modern twist, describes the world of emigrants in a crude, light-hearted and objective way, through the eyes of a young man who has yet to find the key to building his own future.
