Description

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Emil Lanz, an Austrian translator living in Venice, suffers a mid-life crisis and is about to commit suicide when he witnesses a murder. Mobsters burn his house and threaten his life, but he fights back and, in turn, kills two of his pursuers. Though he survives, his previous routine is destroyed . . . then rebuilt, thanks to an eccentric billionaire. He frequently questions the evolving situation: Is it a new reality? A consequence of his suicide that has transported him to a new dimension, to an afterlife? Or has he gone mad and is now in an insane asylum?

Author Gerhard Roth was born in Graz in 1942, the son of a medical doctor and a nurse. He originally intended to study medicine, but soon discontinued his studies. For ten years Roth worked as a computer programmer to support his growing family, but since the mid-1970s he has been exclusively a writer. His major works consist of a cycle of seven novels, Die Archive des Schweigens (The Archives of Silence), and another novel cycle, Orkus (Hades). His work has earned extensive critical acclaim over the years, including the D blin Prize (1983), the Kreisky Prize (2002), and the Grand Austrian State Prize (2016), among many others.