The Liquid Land is a daring and surreal nightmare that lingers long after you turn the final page.

Raphaela Edelbauer skilfully blurs the lines of genre in this remarkable debut that leaves more questions than it answers. While Edelbauer’s prose is overly descriptive, and at times jarring, her style is as unique as the plot itself.

When Ruth Schwarz, an Austrian physicist, loses her parents in a car crash, questions are raised immediately about their death as no apparent injuries are recorded from the crash. What might appear less strange is that her parents’ final request is for them to be buried in her childhood home in the small village of ‘Greater Einland’. Finding the town is no easy task, because technically, it doesn’t exist. Buried beneath the town is an abandoned mine that houses a secret from one of the darkest times of human history. Ruth investigates its origins but is blocked at every turn as she tries to uncover the truth and save the town of her late parents.

The Liquid Land is a powerful sociological and philosophical reflection on society and government. Edelbauer’s use of time as a motif throughout this piece is both insightful and brooding. It is a story rich in murky twists and turns that coerces you to turn each page, if for no other reason than to see what the unreliable narrator Ruth will do next.

If you can handle the unique prose of Edelbauer, then you will reap the benefits of a plot that opens up like a flower.

Reviewed by Samuel Bernard Williams