The Truth About Sascha Knisch by Aris Fioretos
The Truth About Sascha Knisch by Aris Fioretos
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EAN: 9780099488996
Format: Paperback
Published: 1 Feb 2007

Other Editions:
Trade Paperback

Synopsis

‘My name is Knisch, Sascha Knisch, and six days ago my life was in perfect order.’
Knisch, who works as a projectionist at the Apollo movie theatre, is a person with special sexual habits. One night, he sees the enigmatic Dora Wilms again. A week later, she is dead and Knisch is charged with murder. As he tries to clear his name, he discovers a scientific conspiracy and is drawn into the rich tangle of a story in which nothing is as it seems. How can he prove what didn’t happen? What goes on at the Foundation for Sexual Research? And why is it important to have testicles?

A biological thriller set in the steamy underworlds of Weimar Berlin in the sweltering summer of 1928, The Truth about Sascha Knisch deals with the so-called ‘sexual question’, its lures and seductiveness, dangers and temptations, but also with the shrewd passion between two young people in a Germany at the brink of disaster.

What the critics say

Like a cunning diplomat who gets the Foreign Secretary of another country drunk at a dinner party with an eye to obtaining territorial concessions, the Swedish novelist, Aris Fioretos, in this noir-ish novel of 1928 Berlin, serves up an intoxicating brew distilled of equal parts murder mystery, sexological rumination, and historical farce. Having downed this admixture, the giddy reader is likely to redraw the borders of those warring, loving neighbours, the masculine and feminine
- Jeffrey Eugenides

This incredible novel about a young man's odyssey through the sexual underground of Weimar Germany is either a comic tragedy or a tragic comedy, and it is Aris Fioretos' great achievement to keep you guessing past the last page. The Truth about Sascha Knisch is worldly, audacious, haunting in its candour and unremittingly disturbing in its prescience. Fioretos is without a doubt one of Europe's most gifted writers

- Jane Kramer

A masterpiece
- Frankfurter Rundschau

Playful, attentive and deft...dense, colourful writing
- Times Literary Supplement

Editor's Comments

Is it a comic tragedy or a tragic comedy? The Truth About Sascha Knisch depicts a sweltering summer in Berlin in 1928 and keeps the readers guessing to the very last page. Clever, imaginative and stylish this is the perfect exploration of that decadent period, and the wonderfully vivid and eccentric people that filled it.

The Author

Aris Fioretos

Aris Fioretos

Of Greek and Austrian descent, Aris Fioretos was born and raised in Sweden. He was educated at Stockholm and Yale Universities. The recipient of numerous prizes and fellowships, he has published several books in his native country, and also rendered the works of Vladimir Nabokov into Swedish. The Truth about Sascha Knisch is his first novel in English. Aris Fioretos lives with his wife and daughter in Berlin, where he is currently the counsellor for culture at the Swedish Embassy.