The story centers on 11-year-old Sebastian, growing up in a picturesque Bavarian village with an older brother and a single father running the local tavern. The combination of Catholic liturgy, Bavarian folklore and the silly talk of the bar regulars makes for a strange childhood to begin with, but when Sebastian learns that his mother died while giving birth to him, he becomes fascinated with death, dying and immortality. Sebastian's experiments take him from one mishap to another. He takes the advice of the bar regulars all too literally, which gets him into trouble. But he gets into even more trouble when he receives "signs" from his dead mother telling him to steal (and learn to play) a guitar, to set up his father with a married woman and more. And because he believes he has already killed his mother, it's a small step toward committing murder.
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