Author: D.M. Thomas
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Paperback
Staff Pick!
Ant says… "
Don't start this book in public! The opening comprises of a wildy sexual and surreal poem about a couple meeting and discovering one another in a white hotel in the mountains, it is one of the most startling openings to any book and sets the tone of a novel that doesn't let up. The second part of the novel deconstructs this dream poem in Freudian psychology and relates it back to the experiences of the main character Lisa Erdman (under the patient symbolism Frau Anna G). The novel then shifts gear into a narrative of Lisa Erdman's life as an opera singer, and ends with the tragedy of her and her son's deportation to the horrors of Babi Yar. A blend of fantasy, historical fiction and psychoanalysis, this novel is plain weird but also a deeply memorable and startling read.
‘Remarkable and original… there is no novel to my knowledge which resembles this in technique or ideas. It stands alone’ Graham Greene 👀
Highly recommend if you want something to mix things up a bit!"