Maxim Biller

“Dear Zhi! I’m writing to you, for I believe I will probably never see you again. You won’t believe where I am right now. This morning, we boarded a lorry in Rotterdam. In the front, hundreds of tomato crates are piled up, in the back there is us. They took our passports, then we got a few chocolate bars and some bottled water. Don’t ask how we manage without a toilet. There is an air duct, but it doesn’t work. For now, I’m able to think clearly, clearly enough to know that I must pull through. You just have to move as little as possible and not talk, that makes the air last longer…”
A human drama about the gruesome suffocation of 58 illegal immigrants from China. When customs officers in Dover examined a refrigerated transport, they were met with a horrible stench: the officers discovered a mound of human corpses, grown stiff in their death struggle – 54 men and 4 women, suffocated on their way to a supposedly better life. Maxim Biller’s play tells the story of the last hours of these people, of their dreams and hopes, of their excruciating death on their way to a better world.