The Danube Testament

by Mann, Ingrid

• ISBN13: 9781904027126
• ISBN10: 1904027121
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Bookworld Services

Summary

Clinging to a precarious sanity, S., the narrator, inhabits a shifting succession of selves. In the eyes of the matriarch Mia, who feeds his fantasies of hereditary guilt with tales of family scandal, S. is the ideal card partner and untiring listener. To his American cousin Hannah, he is a romantic figure, the lost love of her youth. To the precocious English schoolgirl Sherrill, he is a harmless, pathetic old lecher; while the psychiatrist Dr Rosen sees his patient as a professional enigma who is turning into a dangerous personal enemy. To the police inspector, to his sister Eva and to Brother Sebastian of the hospital staff S. appears in yet other guises. In his own eyes, meanwhile, he is a tragic hero: a visionary artist who suddenly finds that he has become the instrument of an implacable destiny. His story begins with the birth of a fatally handicapped infant and ends with a reported death by drowning in the rain-swollen spring waters of the Danube. The world bracketed by these events is charged with the tensions of S.¿s struggle to cancel the curse of inherited guilt that he sees hanging over future generations. Razor-sharp in observation and rich in subtle humour, this is a story which will resonate in the reader¿s memory.