Richard Kraft, professor of rhetoric in Tübingen, is unhappily married and badly in debt, but he may have found a way out of his misery. His old friend István, a professor at Stanford, has invited him to join him in entering a competition for Silicon Valley. The challenge is to compose an eighteen-minute lecture in the style of Leibniz’s Theodicy to explain why this is the best of all possible worlds and why we can still improve it. The winning entry will receive a prize of a million dollars. With that kind of money, Kraft could free himself from his demanding wife once and for all… With precision, wit, and bite.

Jonas Lüscher tells the story of a man who doesn’t understand himself and of a powerful elite who are prepared to break every taboo and won’t let anything or anyone stand in their way.