Gehen, ging, gegangen (Penguin Germany) (German Edition)

After I started reading this book, I recommended it to a friend because it started off on a very bleak, dark note, and she and I both enjoy that kind of storytelling. She picked up a sample, started reading it, and said the sentences were too short and clipped for her. Well, poo on you! Some of us don't like reading long, flowery sentences that go nowhere!
Anyway, Richard lives in Berlin, right near where the wall used to be, and can still remember the time when the country was split in half and there was little freedom of movement. This forms the backdrop of a story about the refugee crisis in Europe and how it's dealt with (or not) on an individual and globalized basis.
Richard is recently widowed and recently retired. It's summer, and he lives on a lake. A lake where someone recently went missing and presumed drowned. His days are filled with looking out at the lake, fixing himself simple meals, and seeing friends occasionally.
He soon becomes involved with a group of African refugees seeking asylum in Germany, after seeing them camped out in tents in the middle of town. They've been removed from their camp by the authorities and some placed in an old nursing home for shelter. Richard starts visiting them there and learning their stories, befriending a few of them, and of course gets involved in trying to help them, then realizing how impossible their situation is because of good old bureaucracy, which has these poor refugees, who have already suffered so much, going in circles trying to get established. It is infuriating and heartbreaking.