Maya grows up in Germany knowing that her parents are different: from one another, and from the rest of the world. Her reserved, studious father is distant; and her beautiful, volatile mother is a whirlwind, with a penchant for lavish shopping sprees and a mesmerising power for spinning stories of the family s former glory of what was had, and what was lost. And then Kojo arrives one Christmas, like an annunciation: Maya s cousin, and her mother s godson.