A Shadow of Myself, by Peter Flamm

A man troubled by war tries to lose himself by impersonating someone else.

While roaming the scarred battlefields of Verdun in north eastern France, a German man named Wilhelm Bettuch comes across the corpse of a dead surgeon, Hans Stern. A working class baker himself, Wilhelm decides to steal the papers of this professional man, return to Germany, and impersonate him. Things go surprisingly smoothly. Posing as Hans Stern, Wilhelm discovers he has a wife, named Grete. She recognises him as her husband, and any differences in personality she puts down to the traumatic effects of war. Hans/Wilhelm also discovers that neighbours and friends easily recognise him.

But a troubling inner voice says he will be caught. The family dog, Nero, treats him suspiciously. And family friend and prosecutor Sven Borges claims to be on his tail. When Hans/Wilhelm is summoned as a witness in a court case, he risks serious consequences. 

Peter Flamm (real name Erich Mosse, 1891-1963) was born into a Jewish family in Berlin. First published in 1926, A Shadow of Myself is on one level about survivors of trench warfare during the First World War, but on another level it delves into themes of self and presentation of self in society. Hans/Wilhelm (the two are somehow convincingly mixed into one entity) very much hides behind a mask, his inner self a roiling ocean of doubts, anxieties and fears. The text  denies the idea of concrete personality and identity, that hard surface and false veneer we try to wear. In an extraordinary passage, Flamm describes individuals as mere expressions of biology and mysterious nature:

“...our parents aren’t our father and mother, not their blood alone, we have every animal inside us, every plant, all of them speaking their muffled language, as embryos we still have all their shapes, breathing with gills, we’re fish and reptiles and animals, the whole of creation is inside us…we’re all brothers, we’re all one, there’s no guilt because we’re not ourselves…”

The novel’s narration is paced like a thriller, as Hans/Wilhelm constantly fears detection. Even though he is surrounded by friends and family, and  lives in a bustling city, he is nevertheless haunted by a terrifying isolation, a world that can never understand him. In tone and atmosphere, A Shadow of Myself is reminiscent of Kafka’s nightmare existential classic The Trial (the framing device Flamm uses is that of a courtroom confession, where Hans/Wilhelm tells his story.) 

A hundred years after it was first published, this exceptional work of war time fiction can now be enjoyed by English readers. (Translated by Simon Pare.)

A Shadow of Myself, by Peter Flamm. Published by Pushkin Press. $32.99.

MAR26

Vilhelm's Room, by Tove Ditlevsen

An abandoned wife takes a victory lap of sorts, giving an excoriating commentary on her friends, lovers and family. 

Lise Mundus is a celebrated poet. Her husband, Vilhelm, is an equally famous newspaper editor. After twenty years of marriage, he has abandoned his wife. From a psychiatric ward, Lise publishes a lonely hearts ad, searching for a lover. She takes up with Kurt, an aimless drifter  who lives above her flat. The relationship is pretty meaningless to Lise, just a way of filling in the empty hours. What really gives her life a semblance of meaning is a steady stream of exasperated, ironic and often comical commentaries on Vilhelm and his many lovers. Lise is also critical of herself and her own behaviour in the relationship, although the tone of these self-reproaches is breezy and glib. 

As this mad, patchwork narrative barrels along, we know a reckoning is ahead, for in the first page we learn that Lise is already dead.

Vilhelm’s Room was Danish poet and author Tove Ditlevsen’s final novel, published in 1975. It is a bit of a train wreck, but one you can’t look away from. The story jumps all over the place, characters come and go erratically and the narrator’s voice is hard to pin down. Sometimes it’s Lise narrating, sometimes a third person narrator, sometimes it’s hard to figure out who’s who. That might make it sound like a challenging read, and it is to a degree, but the novel’s extraordinary psychodynamics - the ex-lovers, the self loathing, the sexual competition, the painful loneliness- make it compellingly universal. Our darkest moments are here laid bare in a prose that is both despairing and witty. The reader doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Interspersed through the madness are insightful passages where Ditlevsen discusses relationships, childhood and personal struggles. If Vilhelm’s Room has a theme, it is the latter. Lise is flighty, cheerful and witty, even if this is at core a very rancid type of wit, the enjoyment of Vilhelm’s character assasination. Underlying all this is a serious mental illness. Lise talks in earnest about suicide, claiming the thought of it is her only happiness in life, as it provides her the freedom to choose when her misery will end.

Tove Ditlevsen’s final novel is shocking and raw. It’s also darkly comic, with a nervous energy that propels the story. The book should perhaps come with a warning, especially anyone suffering from mental illness. 

Brilliant and original, but also deeply saddening. (Translated by Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell.)

Vilhelm's Room, by Tove Ditlevsen. Published by Penguin. $26.99

MAR26

Freezing Point, by Anders Bodelsen

Danish writer Anders Bodelsen (1937 - 2021) considers the high price of living indefinitely.

It’s 1973. Magazine editor Bruno discovers while shaving a weird lump on his neck, causing him to bleed. He visits specialist Doctor Ackerman and is assured it’s nothing to worry about, but some tests will have to be performed nonetheless. What was presumed to be a benign condition, turns out to be terminal cancer. Bruno hasn’t long to live. But extraordinary leaps in science present Bruno with a terrible choice. Doctor Ackerman offers a radical new procedure. He could be part of an early medical experiment where his body would be “frozen down” and then brought up again decades later when a cure was found. 

Bruno is torn over what to do. He has just started a new relationship with a dancer named Jenny. With limited time to think out his options, he impulsively decides to be frozen down. 

Twenty-two years later he is revived, but finds changes have been made to his body without permission. He has been sterilised and certain organs have been swapped out for synthetic ones. Society has been divided into two classes - “now-life” and “all-life”. Now-life mortgage their organs and live like “hippies”, not having to work. All-lifers work long and hard hours to afford all the medical interventions needed to keep them alive, ostensibly forever.

Bruno hopes to meet his girlfriend Jenny in this brave new world. He persistently asks for a meeting and the hospital authorities keep putting it off, as Jenny has also had some medical interventions. Eventually the reunion occurs. Bruno is  shocked by what Jenny has become. 

Anders Bodelsen was a Danish writer of experimental thrillers. Freezing Point was first published in 1969. It’s a tightly written story that looks at the ethics of medical interventions to prolong life indefinitely. As a sideline, the book also questions the economics of prolonged life. In the imagined society of 1995 and 2022 (the book jumps first 22 years into the future, then 27 years) all resources are directed towards extreme medicine. People who opt to live a natural lifespan sell their organs, while those who wish to live eternally must pay in endless (and by extension, eternal) work.  The novel also plays with ideas of narrative, as editor Bruno muses on different modes of storytelling. In a dehumanised future world, it seems that fiction may have died, as Bruno tries in vain to obtain magazines or books to read.

A gripping and ghoulish thriller offering the reader plenty of ethical conundrums to wrestle with. 
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Freezing Point, by Anders Bodelsen. Translated by Sophie Mackintosh. Faber Fiction $24.99

FEB26

Fall, Bomb, Fall by Gerrit Kouwenaar

A Dutch youth itching for some excitement in his life gets more than he bargained for in this classic coming of age novel.

Karel Ruis is a seventeen-year-old fed up with his dull life and unhappy parents. He wishes for something to happen, anything really. His ennui makes him even wish for a bomb to fall and shake things up. There are rumours afoot that Germany intends to invade his country, the Netherlands. There is an atmosphere of denial and trepidation among the adults. Surely the English will come to their rescue and all will be well.

Karel has an uncle, a jolly fat man who claims to have found the secret of a happy life, despite all the personal tragedies he’s had to endure. Uncle Robert gives Karel a letter, to be delivered to a Mrs Mexocos, a Jewish woman. Karel is to wait for Mrs Mexocos to write a reply. He performs this mysterious errand and finds himself enchanted by the woman - an artist - and her Bohemian style apartment. Mrs Mexocos also has a daughter, named Ria, whom Karel  immediately falls in love with. 

The gathering storm of threatened German invasion happens. Karel’s new and enchanting friends Mrs Mexocos and Ria must flee. They book tickets to London. Karel dearly wants to follow, to escape his miserable family and live a charmed life in London. But he must return home, with only heartache for company. When he arrives back in the city he finds the bombs he had wished for have caused untold tragedy.

Gerrit Kouwenaar (1923 - 2014) wrote Fall, Bomb, Fall when he was a mere twenty-three. The novel’s depth and maturity suggest an author of a much older age, looking back on their youth. Kouwenaar perfectly captures the flightiness and restless energy of youth. Karel is compulsive and reckless, but also warm and earnest. The text is light and playful in tone, almost humorous, despite the dark subject matter of Nazi invasion and looming Jewish persecution and murder. The novel presents a vibrant slice of life, a time when everything is normal and tomorrow can be trusted in, that is soon to be turned upside down and forever destroyed.

First published in 1950 and now translated into English for the first time, this is a literary gem not to be missed.

Fall, Bomb, Fall by Gerrit Kouwenaar. Published by Pushkin. $26.99

FEB26

Murder at the Castle: A Miss Merkel Mystery, by David Safier

Angela Merkel makes her fictional debut as village sleuth in this good natured cozy crime series.

Angela Merkel, ex-German Chancellor, has retired to the rural village of Klein-Freudenstadt (“little happy town”). After years of gruelling public service, she’s looking forward to creating a new life for herself with husband Achim and their little pug, Putin. As the couple make tentative steps to merge with the local community, attending wine festivals and markets, they find themselves at the centre of a murder mystery. Baron von Baugenwitz, owner of the village castle, has been found slumped over a table dead in the dungeon. Angela, who is used to solving problems, can’t resist this one, despite the need for her to keep a low profile due to her political past. As the mystery proceeds, a cast of suspects is introduced: an angry ex-wfie, an angry current wife, a surly, wise-cracking daughter, a cop, a far-right fruit seller and a tour guide. Danger is ever present, however, and Angela must evade an angry killer who knows she is on their tail.

Murder at the Castle is the first in a cozy crime series by German author David Safier. Readers may wonder how credible a fictionalised Angela Merkel would be, but Safier does an admirable job of creating a likable yet slightly offbeat ex-Chancellor. The novel is mostly an affectionate portrait of a devoted middle-aged couple, structured around a classic whodunnit. The plot is interwoven with plenty of humour, references to Merkel’s political career and some 18th century German history. All up, a warm hearted, entertaining frolic.  

Translated by Jamie Bulloch

Murder at the Castle: A Miss Merkel Mystery, by David Safier. Published by HarperCollins. $32.99

August 2025

Eurotrash, by Christian Kracht

 

An eighty year old with a dark, wartime past goes on a quirky road trip with her son. 

​In this work of autofiction, narrator Christian Kracht, famous for his novel Faserland as well as other works, reunites with his octogenarian mother on a road trip of sorts through the Swiss Alps. Middle-aged Christian’s mother - we don’t learn her name - has invested heavily in the arms industry and reaped a whirlwind. Taking her medication with good swigs of vodka,  and sporting a colostomy bag that needs frequent changing, she has withdrawn tens of thousands from her bank account and stuffed the cash in cheap plastic bags, determined to indiscriminately give it away. 

As the two take taxi rides around the Swiss Alps, they go over their past together, trudging through a murky and shameful family history. Christian’s grandfather - his mother’s father - was a member of the Nazi’s SS. 

Eurotrash is a dark, rancid comedy about wealth and privilege. Kracht provides a razor sharp skewering of decadent, self-regarding elites, whose money has come from a long line of misery. There is a sense of ennui and terribly bad taste that goes hand in hand with this ruling class, who don’t do introspection. Rather they live gaudy lives of depressing excess. Worse still, when their pasts are excavated the skeletons of fascism and dirty capitalism are found. 

Christian Kracht is a Swiss writer. Eurotrash was first published in 2021 and now gets an English translation by Daniel Bowles. A novel that is short and acerbic, with a powerful underlying morality.

Eurotrash, by Christian Kracht. Translated by Daniel Bowles. Published by Serpent's Tail. $26.99

March 25

Weights and Measures, by Joseph Roth

A frustrated minor official finds he is not as perfect as he thought he was

​In the District of Zlotogrod, during the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Anselm Eibenschütz is appointed the inspector of weights and measures. His job is to make sure traders are dealing fairly with the public and not short changing or acting otherwise fraudulently. Eibenschütz is not a particularly happy man. He has left the regimented life of the army, which he found quite to his liking, as it took away the need for him to really make choices in life, and now finds himself dealing with petty, small town problems. Everyone, it seems, is an adversary. His wife doesn’t help matters, as she is mostly indifferent to Eibenschütz's plight. She makes things even worse when she embarks upon an affair and becomes pregnant to another man. 

Meanwhile, in the village of Szwaby, Eibenschütz comes across tavern owner Leibusch Jadlowker as a part of his travels. Jadlowker is a dark, shadowy figure with a dodgy past and another dangerous adversary to deal with. A complicating factor to this animosity is Jadlowker’s mistress, Euphemia Nikitsch. Despite Eibenschütz’s high moral standing, he starts up an affair with Euphemia and soon becomes obsessed, causing him to pursue a path that is hypocritical and possibly compromising. 

Joseph Roth (1894 - 1939) was an Austrian-Jewish journalist and novelist famous for his novel The Radetzky March. Weights and Measures is a later novel by Roth, now re-published by Pushkin Press from a 1982 translation by David Le Vay. Despite the novel’s cast of rogues and chancers, cretins and fraudsters, Weights and Measures is a slyly humorous look at the depravity of human nature, written in a crisp, simple prose. The book is set out in a series of episodic misadventures, with short chapters, and the action keeps at a pleasant clip, never boring the reader for a minute. 

The upstanding Eibenschütz, his constant frustrations and self-deceits, acts as a mirror for the reader, making us confront our own ambitions and unpalatable secret desires. A clever and concise study of life’s darker undercurrents.

Weights and Measures, by Joseph Roth. Published by Pushkin. $24.99

FEB 25

War with the News, by Kapel Carek

 

A nation of news threatens to take over the world

When a crackpot seaman named Captain J. van Toch encounters a clever breed of giant newts on a small island in Sumatra, his discoveries bring him to the attention of financier Mr Gussie H. Bondy. The extraordinary thing about the newts is that they have an above average intelligence. They can speak basic human language and are adept at learning industrial techniques. Captain van Toch has them trained to farm pearls. The captain also arms his newts so they can defend themselves against sharks, a major predator that keeps their numbers in check. The newt population consequently explodes and moves to all corners of the earth.

Mr Bondy, the industrialist, forms a “Salamander Syndicate” which exploits newt labour for commercial gain. As the newts are trained to perform ever more technically complex engineering feats, they start to use their new knowledge to assert themselves. A series of earthquakes start to cause worldwide havoc and it’s discovered that their root cause might be from the ocean. Could it the newts?

Czech author Karel Capek wrote this broad spectrum satire in 1936. Everything gets a good roasting: capitalism, modern markets, science, politics and diplomacy. The novel does an expert job of ridiculing human vanity. Humans take it for granted that newts can be used as a source of free labour, basically slaves, but fool themselves into believing they are treating their workforce humanely. The sections detailing cruel experiments on the newts remind that animal welfare has hardly progressed at all.

The novel has an interesting, patchwork style, with no main characters or protagonist. The story reads like a fictionalised history, with excerpts from newspaper articles, academic studies and memoirs forming part of the narrative. A lot of the humour comes from these sections that lampoon official scientific papers and self-aggrandising writers and explorers.

Written against a backdrop of rising Nazism (War with the Newts was banned by the Nazis in 1940), this Science Fiction classic offers a comprehensive and penetrating critique of politics, science and industry. A novel that is astonishingly relevant today and unique for its imaginative and intellectual powers.

War with the News, by Kapel Carek. Penguin Modern Classics. $22.99

First published at northmelbournebooks.com.au November 2020

The Stray Cats of Homs, by Eva Nour

 

A deeply affecting novel based on the true story of a Syrian refugee.

Eva Nour is a Swedish journalist who writes under a pseudonym. In 2015 she met “Sami”, a Syrian asylum seeker whilst working in Paris. The two became friends and later, more seriously involved. Nour persisted in asking Sami questions about the Syrian civil war that started in 2011, encouraging him to open up about his experiences. The result is the remarkable The Stray Cats of Homs, a novelisation of Sami’s story.

The novel begins with Sami’s childhood. He grows up with three siblings and loving parents. Soon enough, the brutal nature of Bashar al-Assad’s police state starts impinging on Sami’s life. He learns to be careful of what to say and to whom. In 2011, a series of non-violent protests against the Assad regime take place which are brutally repressed. When civil war breaks out, many human rights abuses take place that are impossible to countenance. Surely the rest of the world won’t let such violent injustices take place?

Skillfully constructed to make for engaging reading, The Stray Cats of Homs shows how the Syrian civil war, through Sami’s story, has devastated countless lives. A humbling story delivered with grace and humanity.

The Stray Cats of Homs, by Eva Nour. Doubleday $29.99

First published at northmelbournebooks.com.au October 2020 

Swimming in the Dark, by Tomasz Jedrowski

Sex and politics don't mix in this melancholy tale of gay love in Communist Poland.

It's 1980, Poland. The country is fracturing under corrupt Communist rule. Protest movements are gaining ground, even as they are brutally put down. Amidst this political turmoil, eighteen-year-old Ludwik attends an agricultural camp and is soon besotted with Janusz. The two youths go hiking by some idyllic lakes and enjoy the waters, starting a secret affair. While homosexuality is not illegal in Poland at the time, it is still a fast route to social ostracism and shame. For Ludwik, this is a major concern, as he is haunted by an early episode in his life when he made advances to a boy he liked, but was found out and humiliated.

The affair between the two boys is passionate, almost idyllic, but as they get to know each other better, cracks start to appear. Ludwik is critical of the Communist regime and believes the system can be overcome. It's better to live the truth than a lie. Janusz has different ideas. He's about to start work for the regime and has a more pragmatic view. He prefers to work every advantage you can and get ahead. Why suffer? Accordingly, he flirts with Hania, the daughter of a party official. His relationship with Hania means he can live the good life and get special requests fast-tracked. When Ludwik needs some intervention to get a doctoral thesis study approved, Janusz suggests asking Hania. Faced with such an agonising choice, one that also risks his relationship with Janusz, Ludwik finds there is no easy way out.

Swimming in the Dark is the debut novel from Tomasz Jedrowski, a German-born Polish author now living in France. It's written in a simple, elegant style that is engaging and evocative. The plot, one that travels from innocence to experience, is heartbreakingly believable.

A tragic tale that highlights a time when gay lives were filled with shame, secrets and persecution, with an interesting historical backdrop of Communist Poland.
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Swimming in the Dark, by Tomasz Jedrowski. Published by Bloomsbury. $29.99

First published at northmelbournebooks.com.au July 2020

Childhood, by Tove Ditlevsen

Tove Ditlevsen (1917 – 1976) was a Danish poet and author. The Copenhagen Trilogy is a three part memoir Ditlevsen wrote at a time of great personal crisis.

Part one, Childhood, covers the poet’s early teen years. Ditlevsen’s family – parents and brother, Edvin – are shamefully poor, often embarrassed by their reduced circumstances and live in a slum-like area of Copenhagen. Young Tove hangs out with the local kids, especially her friend Ruth, gossiping and exchanging lurid stories.

Tove is a sensitive girl, imaginative and introspective. She only feels truly alive and happy when she writes. Her true passion is poetry, compositions she enters in a private journal. Misunderstood by her parents and teachers, Tove plays dumb and hides her feelings. As a young poet she knows she will be ridiculed should her secret writing life be found out. When Edvin discovers her journal, he laughs out loud while reading her poems. Despite this, Tove will extend some forgiveness to her brother, who works as an apprentice printer, a job he hates.

All in all it’s a lonely and alienating existence for young Tove. She feels no love from her parents, who can only see a traditional and unremarkable career for her as a nanny, minding other people’s children. The mean, gossipy world of her friends is limiting as well. Despite this, Tove dares to dream of one day being published as a poet. She continues to write, no matter how bleak her prospects seem.

At one hundred pages, Childhood is a seductive, intimate self-portrait that ends too soon. How the reader longs for more! (Luckily, there are two more volumes, Youth and Dependency). Ditlevsen captures the essence of a troubled childhood – anxieties over belonging, grim expectations for the future and the indifferent adults who are more absorbed by their own worries. All this contributes to make Childhood a subtle work of existential brilliance. Ditlevsen shows the self stripped back to its vulnerable essence. Some of it is so private and revealing it's possible to feel like a trespasser, having almost  stumbled onto a private journal.

A moving self-portrait of the poet as young, damaged soul.

Translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman 

Childhood, by Tove Ditlevsen. Penguin $22.99

First published at northmelbournebooks.com.au February 2020 

A Moth to the Flame, by Stig Dagerman

A Swedish classic of psychological drama.

Swedish novelist Stig Dagerman's A Moth to the Flame (1948) opens with a funeral. Twenty-year-old Bengt's mother, Alma, is to be buried. It's a time of guilt, anger and mixed emotions as the family remembers the often neglected Alma. Bengt tries to cope with the loss of his mother, and he has his sympathetic and gentle fiancée, Berit, to help. But things take a dark turn when he discovers that his father, Knut, has been seeing another woman, Gun, a cashier at the local theatre. Bengt becomes both attracted to and repulsed by Gun. His emotions bounce violently between love and hate, keeping him in a state of permanent, unresolved distress.

Stig Dagerman wrote a series of highly regarded novels in his early twenties, suddenly stopped writing, and five years later tragically committed suicide at the age of thirty-one. A Moth to the Flame, a work of staggering emotional maturity, was published when the author was in his mid twenties. It's a brooding, dreamlike work of psychological interiors. The novel has no real centre of gravity and rather floats like a miasma, drenched in Freudian gloom, with its themes of guilt, desire and traumatic family relationships. The deeply conflicted Bengt has much in common with Shakepeare's Hamlet as he tries to avenge his mother's memory but is unable to set out on any definite course.

A mini masterpiece from a gifted writer who died too young.  

A Moth to the Flame, by Stig Dagerman. Penguin Classics. $22.99

First published October 2019 at northmelbournebooks.com.au  

Crossing, by Pajtim Statovci

Pajtim Statovci's second novel, Crossing, recently translated into English by David Hackson, concentrates on themes of loss, displacement and identity.
​
Bujar is a young Albanian dealing with an array of problems, personal and political. His homeland, Albania, is increasingly unstable and he feels himself oscillating between being male and female, gay and straight. His best friend, Agim, is feminine, highly intelligent and likes to dress in women’s clothes. The two boys – they are in their mid-teens – decide that there is no place for them in Albania and decide to flee. They spend much time tramping around Tirana, the country’s capital, until they save enough money to travel to Western Europe.

The story takes place along three different timelines and mostly focuses on Bujar. We see him at fourteen in Albania and in his early twenties when living in countries such as Spain, Germany and Italy. He also spends time in New York. The final part of the novel, when Bujar is in his late twenties, sees him in Finland. Throughout his travels Bujar always feels displaced, never quite fitting in, a constant outsider who dreads being asked the question, “Where are you from?” Shame is a recurring emotion, as Bujar feels himself to be both spiritually and physically homeless.

Many of the themes Pajtim Statovci addressed in his debut novel, My Cat Yugoslavia, are reprised here. The political and social history of the Balkans during the 1990s; the nature of being a displaced person; difficult family relationships exacerbated by war; and the terrible loneliness and despair that can result from a diverse gender and sexuality.

Pajtim Statovci is gifted at writing a spirited narrative that keeps the reader always engaged, helped by the fact that his writing is based on personal experiences. There’s no doubting the authenticity of Bujar’s narrative. Statovci also has a wonderfully surreal, even poetic, imagination. There are some beautiful set pieces, especially in the final pages where Bujar dreamily imagines his lover as a horse.
Crossing is often melancholy and haunting, a deeply affecting story of people lost and estranged in the world.

Crossing, by Pajtim Statovci. Published by Pushkin Press. $32.99

First published August 2019 at northmelbournebooks.com.au

Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse

A young man goes on a spiritual quest.

Hermann Hesse is one of those writers I've long known about - who hasn't, right? - but have no clue as to what it is he actually writes about. His most famous novel, Steppenwolf, always makes me think of the late 60s band ("Born to be Wild") and so I've long associated Hesse with some sort of counter culture movement. In fact, it's probably these associations that has stopped me from reading Hesse. I've vaguely presumed that Hesse's novels, especially Steppenwolf, are depressing.

It's an interesting exercise, isn't it, to read an author you've long had preconceived ideas about and to find out the truth of the matter. What a joy it has been to discover Siddhartha.

The story is quite simple. A young man, Siddhartha, goes on a spiritual quest. He leaves his father's house with his good friend Govinda and joins a group of wayfaring ascetics, the Samanas. Filled with doubts and questions, both Siddhartha and Govinda join a holy man named Gautama. Gautama is the Buddha, the enlightened one. Still not satisfied, Siddhartha moves on to follow his own path, leaving Govinda behind.

Suffering a spiritual crisis, Siddhartha decides to join the material world and live as everyone else does. He meets and lives with the courtesan Kamala. He spends many years living this life, but then again has an about face when he meets a ferryman. He eschews wealth and worldly pleasures for the simple wisdom of tending to the river.

Siddhartha is one of those magical books that are as vital, as energetic and enlivening, as life itself. Because Hesse discusses issues that are so important to all of us - the right way to live, how to cope with life's suffering, the ultimate meaning of life - the book cannot help but to have an urgency and  deep connection with the reader. Hesse also writes in a simple, beautiful, poetic language that is true and pure.

It's so exciting to discover a great new writer. I'll look forward to trying some of Hesse's other novels soon.

My Cat Yugoslavia, by Pajtim Statovci

Finnish-Kosovan author Pajtim Statovci's debut, My Cat Yugoslavia, mixes surreal invention with late twentieth century history to examine the trauma of war and displacement. 

Bekim is a young man born to Albanian parents. He has four other siblings, three sisters and one brother. When war breaks out in the early 1990s, the family must flee their home in Kosovo. Bajram, the socially conservative father, considers moving to America or Australia, but finally settles on Finland. Life in Finland, an advanced democracy with a first class economy, turns out to be a place hostile to foreigners. While Bajram and his wife Emine watch the news, with its daily stories of their country being ripped apart by war, their children find their own identities torn. Neither Finnish or Albanian, they don't fit in anywhere and drift emotionally from their parents. 

Pajtim Statovci's debut novel My Cat Yugoslavia (translated by David Hackston) runs two parallel stories, of mother and son. First the reader is introduced to Bekim. He's gay, somewhat emotionally detached and is struggling to form a permanent relationship. For company, he buys a pet boa constrictor, a muscular creature that is nonetheless quite placid. Later, in a bar he meets a cat that wears human clothes and talks. He invites the cat back to his flat, but discovers the cat is xenophobic and homophobic. 

The second story is a history of his mother, Emine, from the time she marries as a teenager to when her children are finally grown, covering the time span from 1980 – 2008. She endures a horrible “traditional” marriage, is beaten and treated like a slave rather than a wife. Despite these hardships, she sometimes feels pity for her husband and can understand his grief in losing his country. 

There is much to enjoy in this fine debut. Pajtim Statovci writes an urgent and compelling prose that is hard to put down. His subject matter – loss, displacement, generational trauma – comes from a place of personal experience, giving his story authenticity (Statovci's family fled Kosovo in the early nineties).

For those who have forgotten the Balkan Wars, My Cat Yugoslavia is a stark reminder of the atrocities suffered during those years. Statovci also adds surrealistic features (mysterious cats and laid back snakes), giving his story a pleasantly beguiling aspect. 
A fascinating debut and an author to watch.

My Cat Yugoslavia, by Pajtim Statovci. Published by Pushkin Press. RRP: $19.99

Review by Chris Saliba. First published July 2019 at northmelbournebooks.com.au

The Death of Murat Idrissi, by Tommy Wieringa.

A devastating tragedy about two unlikely people smugglers.

On a whim, two young women make a hastily planned trip to Morocco. Born in Holland, yet of African parentage, Thouraya and Ilham feel perennially dislocated, belonging nowhere. They hire a car, take up with the streetwise Saleh and find themselves visiting a slum. Saleh wants the girls to see the real Morocco. They are taken to a makeshift home and meet a desperately poor family. The mother wants Thouraya and Ilham to smuggle her teenage son, Murat, in the boot of their car to Europe where there is economic opportunity. Saleh assures the girls it will be easy. Murat only has to survive the two hour ferry trip across the Strait of Gibaltar to Spain. The girls reluctantly agree but soon realise it's a terrible decision. They are swiftly plunged into an inescapable nightmare.

Dutch writer Tommy Wieringa has written a taut, elegant thriller that addresses issues of race, identity, refugees, third world poverty and first world entitlement. We want Murat to succeed, to lift his family out of its unrelentingly miserable situation, yet the risks are intolerable. Uncomfortable moral problems are raised in this ultimately tragic story about two accidental people smugglers and their ill-fated human cargo. Harrowing and shocking, The Death of Murat Idrissi will burn in your memory.

The Death of Murat Idrissi, by Tommy Wieringa. Published by Scribe. RRP: $29.99

Review by Chris Saliba

Childhood, by Gerard Reve

Two early novellas capture with clarity the often strange and cruel world of childhood.

Dutch author Gerard Reve (1923-2006) has only recently come to the attention of English readers. His 1947 novel The Evenings was translated to much acclaim in 2016. Now translator Sam Garrett brings two of Reve’s early novellas together in a single volume called Childhood. 

In "Werther Nieland", eleven-year-old Elmer describes his neighbourhood world. He invents secret clubs, recruits then drops members, invents rudimentary science projects, helps friends (unsuccessfully) explode homemade bombs and fires malfunctioning guns at defenceless birds. It’s very much a boy’s world, full of cruelty, creativity, spontaneity and ritual. Elmer’s friendships with the boys Dirk, Werther and Maarten are as much about play as they are about competition and exploitation. 

The second, shorter novella, "The Fall of the Boslowits", chronicles the cruel fate of the Boslowits family as the Germans occupy Amsterdam during the Second World War. Narrated by teenage family friend Simon, the Boslowits, whom we presume are Jewish, are already in a vulnerable position. The father, Hans, cannot walk and the son, Otto, has an intellectual disability. Slowly but surely the beatings and disappearances start, family assets are stripped, until the full nightmare reaches its ghastly conclusion.

Gerard Reve’s evocative language and extraordinary recall of the stranger details of childhood gives these two novellas a realism that is unerring  and unforgettable.

Childhood, by Gerard Reeve. Pushkin Press. $24.99

The Judge and His Hangman, by Friedrich Durrenmatt

It's 1948. A local policeman, Aphons Clenin, finds a man murdered in his blue Mercedes on a Swiss country road in the town of Twann. The man is a fellow policeman, Ulrich Schmied. It turns out the murdered policeman was on his way to a private party at the house of a rather shady character named Gastmann, a self-described adventurer, with important connections in the worlds of finance, politics and art. Schmied, the murdered man, had actually been sent to the party under a false name in order to spy on Gastmann.

Enter inspector Barlach. He's elderly, world weary and may only have a year left to live. With his assistant Tschanz, the two men explore different avenues and methods in their pursuit of the killer. The most obvious suspect is Gastmann. Barlach and Gastmann go back a long way. In fact, Barlach knows of Gastmann's criminal history – how he has killed for the sheer thrill of it – and has long tried to prove his guilt. To no avail. Gastmann, a truly menacing character, continually taunts. Has he, the most likely killer, actually comitted the crime? Not all is as it seems in this kaleidoscopic, hall-of-mirrors type crime classic.

The Judge and his Hangman by Swiss crime master Friedrich Durrenmatt is taut and gripping. The plot is perfectly designed, revealing itself with consummate skill. The story features a cast of well drawn, compelling characters, especially the duelling Barlach and Gastmann, the latter positively Iago-like in his thoroughgoing evil.

A must for connoseiurs of the genre.

Cow, by Beat Sterchi

A little known 1983 Swiss novel about man's brutal relationship to animals makes a welcome return.

Beat Sterchi is a Swiss writer whose only novel, Cow, examines in exhaustive detail the way animals are treated by humans as either amusing sentient beings or merely a commercial product on an abattoir factory line. Originally published in German under the title Blosch (meaning “blush”, as in the colour red), Cow is a work of great originality.

The novel has two narratives which alternate, chapter by chapter. The first chronicles a season at Farmer Knuschel’s dairy farm in the town of Innerwald. A Spanish foreign worker, Ambrosio, turns up as cheap labour and Farmer Knuschel is pleased with his work, but there are xenophobic rumblings in the town and some locals start agitating for the farm hand’s removal.

Another main character in this first narrative is the dairy cow, Blosch. She is described as an empress, the reigning queen of Farmer Knuschel’s stable of dairy cows. She has been producing bull calves for her entire reproductive career, but Farmer Knuschel would like her to produce a female calf.

The scenes in this first narrative have an idyllic, almost dreamlike quality, shot through with gentle satire and irony. They’re almost like something out of a story by Chekov or Gogol, with lush descriptions of rolling hills, green fields and hypnotically mooing cows.

The second narrative takes place seven years later, when Ambrosio is working at a nearby abattoir. The whole tone of these chapters is brutal and frank in describing the work of killing, dismembering and processing animal carcasses. It’s ugly, filthy and dangerous work. Intestines, lungs, hearts and all manner of body parts are pulled out, thrown onto assembly lines, dunked in sterilising baths and readied for sale. Workers, who are poor or foreign, often lose body parts due to the dangerous nature of the work. It’s really a hell on earth.

Into this bloody nightmare walks Blosch. After her majestic appearance in chapter one, it’s a shock to see her terrible fate in chapter two, the alternate abattoir chapter. Sterchi describes her awaiting her fate:

“She was civilised inside and out, horn to udder, even on the abattoir platform she remained submissive and meek.”

In further scenes the horror continues when one of Blosch’s calves is also sent to be slaughtered. As the novel continues, alternating between farm and abattoir, the idyllic is contrasted against the monstrous, even though both worlds are intimately connected.

Beat Sterchi trained as a butcher, and he seems to have had first hand experience of every aspect of how an abattoir is run. The detail is exhaustive - written almost with a poet’s eye for image and metaphor - and not simple shock value alone. The double narrative is well sustained over 400 pages and never gets bogged down, despite the subject matter. The energetic pace, mixed with the wide cast of characters, keeps the reader on their toes. Cow reads like a classic, with its own unique voice, language and themes, all effortlessly woven together.

There are obvious parallels with Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the classic expose of Chicago’s meat packing district. Cow exposes the ruthlessness of the capitalist system (the workers are always under pressure to work faster and produce more meat, no matter the dangers) and how foreign workers are exploited for their cheap labour. It also examines the relationship humans have with animals.

“The cow stood and bled, and it was as though she knew the long history of her kind, as if she knew she was one of those mothers cheated of their rich white milk, who had offered their teats for thousands of years, and for thousands of years had been devoured in recompense.”

Cow doesn’t preach a message, although it does hold up a mirror to the human soul. The view is dark and unsettling.

Cow, by Beat Sterchi. Head of Zeus. RRP: $19.99

The Ice Palace, by Tarjei Vesaas

Staff review by Chris Saliba

A young girl goes missing in a palace created out of ice. 

In rural Norway eleven-year-old Siss is on the way to meet Unn, a new girl at her school. Unn is a bit mysterious, with no father and a mother who died recently. The girls go to Unn’s Auntie’s house, where they try to get to know each other. They are by turns friendly and shy. Unn says she has a secret, the details of which aren’t revealed. The girls then part ways for the day, feeling a little awkward after their first meeting.

The next day Unn decides to skip school and visit an ice palace that has been created at a nearby waterfall. The ice palace, created by the freezing temperatures working on the  splashing water, has many different cave-like rooms. Unn becomes transfixed by the beauty of the ice palace and its many strange natural forms. She steps into one of the rooms and never emerges again.

When the people of the town find out that Unn hasn’t returned, a search is instigated. Some suspicion falls on Siss, however, as everyone knows that Unn confided in her some type of secret.

Norwegian author Tarjei Vesaas’s The Ice Palace (1963) is essentially a mystery about an unusual, secretive young girl who goes missing. (Her disappearance has similarities to Australian novelist Joan Lindsay’s Picnic At Hanging Rock.) The other main character, besides the girls, is of course the ice palace itself. The novel describes its evolution from gushing torrents of water into a beautiful palace; the first fissures as the warmer weather comes and the palace cracks apart; and finally, its disintegration, sweeping all that came with it into the river system. Vesaas's descriptions of the natural wonders of a Norwegian winter form some of the novel's aesthetic highlights.

A gripping mood piece and a haunting ode to some of nature’s more mysterious work.

The Ice Palace, by Tarjei Vesaas. Published by Penguin Modern Classics. ISBN: 9780241321218  RRP: $22.99

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