Eine Billion Dollar
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First edition cover
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| Author | Andreas Eschbach |
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| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
| Genre | Economic Thriller |
| Publisher | Lübbe |
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Publication date
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September 2001 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 887 (paperback) |
| ISBN | |
Eine Billion Dollar is a 2001 novel by German writer Andreas Eschbach. Its plot revolves around a young pizza driver from New York City, who inherits a trillion US dollars from one of his ancestors who lived in 16th century Florence. With the money comes a prophecy that he must use it to give humanity back its lost future.
The title is correctly translated into English as "One Trillion Dollars", as it refers to the long scale use of the word billion (10), which is called a trillion in the short scale.
John Salvatore Fontanelli, the son of a shoemaker in New York who works as a pizza driver, is one day invited to the Waldorf Astoria by an Italian lawyer, where he is informed that he inherited a huge fortune simply by being the last male descendant of a wealthy Italian merchant living and working in 16th century Florence. This merchant put a rather small amount of money in a bank account some 500 years ago. Through the magic of compound interest, this sum has now grown into the equivalent of roughly 1,000,000,000,000 US dollars.
In one fell swoop, John Fontanelli has become by far the richest person in the world, his net worth being bigger than the GDP of most countries. Yet, his ancestor has charged his heir with the task of using the inheritance to give back mankind its lost future.
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Wikipedia