From the internationally best-selling author of Measuring the World and F, an eerie and supernatural tale of a writer's emotional collapse
"It is fitting that I'm beginning a new notebook up here. New surroundings and new ideas, a new beginning. Fresh air."
This passage is from the first entry of a journal kept by the narrator of Daniel Kehlmann's spellbinding new novel. It is the record of the seven days that he, his wife, and his four-year-old daughter spend in a house they have rented in the mountains of Germany—a house that thwarts the expectations of the narrator's recollection and seems to defy the very laws of physics. He is eager to finish a screenplay for a sequel to the movie that launched his career, but something he cannot explain is undermining his convictions and confidence, a process he is recording in this account of the uncanny events that unfold as he tries to understand what, exactly, is happening around him—and within him.
Industry Reviews
"Mind-bending. . . . Part horror, part science fiction." --The New York Times Book Review
"A book that should carry a health warning: read alone at your own risk." --Monocle "Riveting." --Entertainment Weekly
"Clever, exquisitely terrifying. . . . [Kehlmann] makes entertainment out of metaphysics." --Harper's Magazine
"A masterclass in economical storytelling, meticulously attentive prose and imaginative agility. Kehlmann creates narrative complexity with the deftest of strokes." --The Literary Review
"[A] master novelist. . . . [Kehlmann] has a rare ability to make complex ideas the stuff of warm, light fiction." --The Times Literary Supplement
"A beautifully crafted exercise in terror. . . . [Kehlmann] creates a sense of existential dread that transcends the typical ghost story. . . . A book to keep you up at night." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[Kehlmann] is in total control. . . . He and his translator Ross Benjamin squeeze an enormous amount of readerly anxiety out of very few carefully placed words. . . . This is a story about a marriage in trouble, and about a seemingly impossible desire to protect a young child from threatening reality, but also about something else, something unavoidable and powerful but terrifyingly vague. . . . This little book . . . has a funny way with dimensions--its effects are amplified, and they linger." --The Spectator
"A masterful experiment about the limits of literary realism." --The Brooklyn Rail
"Wry, eerie and increasingly terrifying. . . . Kehlmann is a formidable observer with a flair for articulating dysfunctional behaviour. . . . An entertaining Everyman's postmodernist Gothic guaranteed to unsettle." --The Irish Times
"A quick, fun, breathless read. It's inventive and scary--and a delightful take on the writing life." --The Huffington Post
"Chilling. . . . Kehlmann makes deft use of horror staples and offers commentary on the distinction between art and life." --Publishers Weekly
"A taut and scary novella." --The Sunday Times (London)
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