A cheesy love story dripping with kitsch: Doe-eyed sister Helga falls head over heels for handsome surgeon Robert. It's not the kind of story you would expect to find in an economics textbook.

Sister Helga. You maximise my happiness is German author Thomas Hoenscheid's latest novel and an eccentric attempt at teaching struggling students the basics of supply and demand.

The work of fiction has "silky-haired," "long-legged" Helga falling in love with broad-shouldered Doctor Robert and being driven to despair in her tireless mission to conquer his heart.

Helga is portrayed as the traditional smitten bimbo, intrigued by family secrets, dismayed by risky surgical operations and enchanted by idyllic strolls in the spring breeze.

But the surgeon of her dreams is not the moral and humane doctor he appears to be. Instead he is a money-driven businessman, only interested in maximizing his profits and minimizing costs.

Devastated, Helga plunges into the world of microeconomics in a desperate attempt to learn what goes on inside his head.

A ginger student casts light on the basics of Marxist ideology and a natter in Helga’s hair salon spells out the theory behind the mechanism of price-fixing in a competitive market.

Abandoning her former bubble-headed self, the nurse becomes a die-hard fan of the free market. A family outing turns into an "afternoon of Pareto optimality," sending her into a simplified state of perfect well-being.

Before treating a sick child, she evaluates whether or not to nurse it to health, concluding that its "depreciation" would be "write-down on a long-term investment."

Realising that the loss of a child is also the loss of "spezifisches Beziehungskapital" -- relationship capital -- Helga reassures the mother that she will recover as soon as she finds something more profitable.

Hoenscheid even ventures into the unexplored terrain of theoretical romance.

"Helga! I love you,” Doctor Robert says, “Would you like to enter into a long-term contractual agreement, declaring that we will exchange material and sentimental goods?"


A new kind of textbook

"All extreme economic theories, like Marxism and the ideal of the perfect free market, seem ridiculous to me," said author Hoenscheid -- an economics graduate who was "initially slightly left" but later "became more liberal."

The book, he says, is meant to make economics more exciting. "I remember that my university lectures were all rather dull," he says, adding that his book is targeted chiefly at "students who need help with their revision."

And despite the kitschy style, the theories are indeed all rather complex, consisting of difficult mathematical explanations and technical passages.

Hoenscheid, who finished writing his novel in June, is proud of the outcome but does have one regret: "If I had waited until Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, I could have added a section about bankers and the financial markets."

Nonetheless, if the story of Helga proves to be a hit, Hoenscheid promises to launch into his next project – a book on macroeconomics.

Helga, he explains focuses more on microeconomics and the behaviour of individual stakeholders, like businesses and consumers.

Says Hoenscheid: "Perhaps I will make it a police novel or a country romance set high up in the idyllic Bavarian Alps."

Aurelia End/AFP/Expatica

Schwester Helga - Du maximierst mein Glück: Der Arztroman zur Mikroökonomie (Broschiert) von Thomas Hönscheid von der Lancken (Autor), Christiane Hahn (Illustrator)