From the internationally bestselling author of Measuring the World and F, an eerie and supernatural tale of a writer's emotional collapse
A screenwriter, his wife, and their four-year old daughter rent a house in the mountains of Germany, but something isn't right. As he toils on a sequel to his most successful movie, the screenwriter notices that rooms aren't where he remembers them--and finds in his notebook words that are not his own.
"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)