A first novel hailed as Germany's most exciting fiction debut of last year, Lost walks us into what we think is familiar territory and then suddenly turns all our expectations upside down. An ordinary German family flees from the advancing Russian army in 1945, makes it to safety, and starts over, painstakingly building a new life in the postwar economic miracle. But in the refugee trek west there was a victim, and that victim was their firstborn son, Arnold. "Arnold isn't dead. He didn't starve, either," is what the little brother, the narrator of this story, is finally told by his parents when he is about eight years old. "I was only just beginning to understand that Arnold, my un-dead brother, had the leading role in the family, and had assigned me a supporting part." The search is on. Finding lost Arnold is his parents' dream. It is the little brother's nightmare. Laconically distanced, often darkly and wickedly funny, Lost is the psychological and emotional roller coaster that follows, as seen through the eyes of the youngest and most subversive person in the novel. It is a brilliant debut.

Lost: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Treichel, Hans-Ulrich

Contemporary

Pantheon

An ordinary young man and a hopeless romantic with a host of private obsessions, mostly about sex, Albert falls in love with Elena, a beautician from Sardinia, and accompanies her back to Sardinia, where things begin to fall apart. By the author of Lost. 12,500 first printing.

Leaving Sardinia: A Novel

Not since The Reader has a work of fiction so stunningly evoked the guilt and shame that resounds in postwar Germany. In this debut novel of astonishing originality, we bear witness to a family ravaged with regret at the loss of their child. As a young boy, the narrator learns that his parents lost their firstborn son while fleeing the advancing Russian Army in 1945. Though his family has comfortably settled in Westphalen, the memory of Arnold continues to haunt them. The narrator shares his parents' anguish, but he can't resist feeling resentful, for his brother's absence is the most defining aspect of his life. When his parents learn of a foundling that resembles Arnold, they embark on a horrific quest to claim him as their own, only to endure a series of unanticipated twists that lead to a startling denouement. At turns uncanny, subtle, and perversely amusing, Lost is a chilling novel of mesmerizing power.

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Disparu

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Фоліо

Der Verlorene. Text und Kommentar.

Suhrkamp Verlag KG

Der Verlorene (German Edition)

Suhrkamp Verlag

Literary

Suhrkamp

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