Fiction in translation This article is more than 2 years oldReviewThe Liquid Land review – a memorable Austrian allegory
This article is more than 2 years oldA town is being sucked down a vast hole in Raphaela Edelbauer’s subtle, whimsical debut about historical memory
When physicist Ruth Schwarz learns that her parents have died in a car crash, she travels to their hometown in remote rural Austria to arrange their burial. Greater Einland (population: 1,000) has no internet and no ATMs; the local economy runs on a complex system of IOUs. Even more remarkably, it is being gradually sucked down into a vast subterranean hole of unknown provenance. The imperious countess who governs the town enlists Schwarz to help fix the problem. Surveying Greater Einland from a vantage point, “the scale of the subsidence was revealed. The surfaces were hacked to pieces … A crack went around the centre of town, as disfiguring as a deep scar.” While investigating this geological puzzle, Schwarz unearths an obscure conspiracy involving mass graves linked to second world war atrocities.
Ably translated from the German by Jen Calleja, Raphaela Edelbauer’s impressive debut novel is a subtle allegory of historical memory and collective guilt, combining a dreamy, gothic strangeness with whimsical humour and an element of farce. Its narrator-protagonist encounters a number of eccentric and creepy local characters, including a sexagenarian called Glottersaat who is inexplicably at liberty despite having murdered his entire family (“‘He works for the administrative office now, never did anything peculiar again,’ said Sister Elfriede”). Things take an absurdist turn when the countess devises a deranged plan to host a Documenta-style art festival in the sinking town.
Edelbauer’s Greater Einland is a quaint Mitteleuropean tableau – a world of rotary-dial telephones, lederhosen and schnitzel. The decor at the countess’s salon “looked as if Jay Gatsby and Austrian country aesthetics had celebrated their nuptials: abundant arrangements of gentian flowers were placed among … deer antlers”. The narrative voice evokes the diligence of an engineer’s report, oozing deadpan bathos. Concocting a filler to plug the giant cavity, Schwarz shows her workings: “It was not possible to mix slag … oneself. So I switched to bitumen and coarse-grained sand, pressed the nets of fungus in small coffee balls and mixed the rest of the grounds with the pseudo-asphalt that I’d made.” The novel’s deft blend of registers – at once uncannily foreboding and drily comic – makes for an absorbing and memorable tale.
The Liquid Land by Raphaela Edelbauer, translated by Jen Calleja, is published by Scribe (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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