Darkenbloom

Darkenbloom uses the historical case of Rechnitz to investigate the nature of guilt and remembrance, repression and confession, public memory and public amnesia more broadly Menasse is, above all else, an astute observer of human psychology. Her novels narration roams between characters, whose chunks of worldview and life story form a panorama of the towns haunted present alongside moments where the author-narrator addresses the reader with direct commentary on the Darkenbloomers or reflections on the nature of memory itself In Menasses thoughtful hands, the invented town of Darkenbloom is not a cipher for one specific historical event, but rather a stage to explore more universal concerns. -- Alexander Wells * The Guardian * A novel of great ambition and achievement. -- Nick Rennison * The Sunday Times * Darkenbloom is an epic achievement that ought to take its place as an essential text of European literature, devastating in its portrayal of how atrocities are perpetuated and disavowed. -- Kate McLoughin * TLS * Menasse (Vienna) delivers an immersive, gloom-ridden tale of an Austrian towns secrets and tensions in the months before the fall of the Berlin Wall This unsettling novel offers a singular sense of place. * Publishers Weekly * In Eva Menasses historical novel Darkenbloom, the wartime secrets of a small Austrian town are compromised by the urgent demands of the present disturbing events are tempered by rich, omniscient knowledge of the characters, whose quirky humour and humanity amid an impeccable backdrop of clandestine forests and undulating, dappled mountain views captivate. Heralding the expansive disruptions of social change, the intricate novel Darkenbloom muses through an Austrian towns troubled past. -- <em>Foreword Reviews</em>, starred review Journalism is quick, but literary art takes time. I have often wondered where it is, the great epic of complicity. Now its finally here. Darkenbloom is a nice idyllic small town, but we gradually find out what each of its inhabitants did back then and what they subsequently deleted from their memories. Darkenbloom is truly one of the great European novels of our time, one that sets standards for how fiction can treat history. -- Daniel Kehlmann, author of <em>Tyll</em> Eva Menasse has produced a masterpiece While none of these motifs that Eva Menasse invokes are new, it feels like youre experiencing them here for the first time in Technicolor and Dolby Stereo. How does she do this? Entirely through language. And that is why Darkenbloom is a novel that will last As a novel, Darkenbloom is both a gripping linguistic thrill and a thriller a thriller about coming to terms with the past. Until the very end, you want to know who knew what, and what they covered up or hushed up. The way Eva Menasse spreads this information throughout the novel in such a way that every word dropped at the beginning is resolved at the end and the suspense grows page after page is absolutely masterful Eva Menasses novel is a stroke of genius. * DIE ZEIT * Darkenbloom stirs up, saddens, pulls you along especially through its characters and is undoubtedly one of the most important books of this fall. Great. * NDR * Not a reunification novel, nor a key novel: Eva Menasses new novel Darkenbloom is something better. In a bitterly comic way, it turns a historical event into the background of a small-town portrait in 1989 But where is Darkenblooms third master builder, besides God and the Devil, the novels author? Shes there just two sentences later in all her sarcasm: You wish God could only see into the houses and not the hearts. Only literature should dare to look into dark souls. Literature like this. * FAZ * Eva Menasse has succeeded in writing an unobtrusively dense novel that lets the silence roar. One cannot escape it.

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 Bll Prize, the Friedrich Hlderlin Prize, the Jonathan Swift Prize, the Austrian Book Prize, the Ludwig Brne Prize, and a fellowship at the Villa Massimo in Rome. Her books have been translated into numerous languages and have sold 500,000 copies. Charlotte Collins studied English Literature at Cambridge University and worked as an actor and radio journalist in Germany and the UK before becoming a literary translator. Her co-translation, with Ruth Martin, of Nino HaratischvilisThe Eighth Life won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, and in 2017 she was awarded the Goethe-Instituts Helen and Kurt Wolff Translators Prize for Robert Seethalers A Whole Life. Other translations include Seethalers The Tobacconist, Homeland by Walter Kempowski, and Olga by Bernhard Schlink.