I imagine that some readers of this magazine might have spent hours exploring the beautiful scenery of Central Europe, Italy, or the Adriatic Coast. However, these seemingly perfect scenes mask dreadful secrets from our recent past.

Austrian novelist Eva Menasse cleverly lures readers into the decaying Darkenbloom village, at once highlighting its brutalist architecture, now cheek by jowl with the grandeur of a ruined Habsburg castle.

It’s the late 1980s. The Berlin Wall has fallen. Our first glimpse of Darkenbloom is through the eyes of Herr Lowetz as he revisits his family home. While on the bus he develops an odd ear worm; the Nazi salute is a travel defect.

Sure enough, Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil is evoked within a few pages, via the remembered description of a senseless, bloody beating of an itinerant from the Lovari community.

I am a great admirer of the Viennese writer Stefan Zweig. Both he and Menasse are consummate chroniclers of the life and times of a Germanic people descended from the Holy Roman Empire. The village residents, much like the old Austro-Hungarian Double Eagle, turn their faces to both the past and the future.

Darkenbloom’s citizens learnt to endure the ravages of war, by pointing at The Other, from across the border, as the source of their woes. If you visit Darkenbloom, courtesy of Eva Menasse’s book, be sure not to mention the most recent conflict. Yes, that war. Leave this topic to Darkenbloom’s assorted denizens.

Not to be missed.

Reviewed by Henry Johnston

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eva Menasse was born in Vienna in 1970 and has lived in Berlin for over twenty years. She began her career as a journalist, and has published several bestselling novels and short story collections, as well as essay collections. Her accolades include the Heinrich Böll Prize, the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize, the Jonathan Swift Prize, the Austrian Book Prize, the Ludwig Börne Prize, and a fellowship at the Villa Massimo in Rome.

Her books have been translated into numerous languages and have sold 500,000 copies.

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