When I finished Follow your Heart by Susanna Tamaro, I decided to stay in the Italian groove and look around for another novel in Italian. I soon came across this little oddity, published in 1984, by the Italian writer,
Francesca Duranti. Make no bones about it, I was attracted by the title, La casa sul lago della luna, Das Haus am Mondsee or, in English, The House on Moon Lake. I suppose I was also attracted by the idea of the book's content - an obscure novel written by a little-known German writer called Fritz Oberhofer. Which writer would not be tempted by such a title and such an idea even if both idea and theme hark back, perhaps, to a before-the-advent-of-modern-technology days of our parents and grandparents. And does this matter?
The novel's protagonist, Fabrizio Garrone, is an impoverished translator working in Milan. He hears about a lost novel entitled, Das Haus am Mondsee, and tracks it down in Austria. So taken is he with the original text that he is almost bewitched by it and this is reflected in his translation so that, in a real sense, he becomes the author.
His completed translation is a smash hit and Fabrizio is asked to write a biography of the author, Fritz Oberhofer. Unfortunately, Oberhofer disappeared in the last 3 years of his life and Fabrizio is obliged to invent both the events of that life and, to bring the life alive, a mistress, Maria Lettner. Soon, Fabrizio receives a telephone call from a woman claiming to be Maria Lettner's granddaughter. She invites him to a house on Moon Lake in order to read letters between Fritz and Maria. When Fabrizio accept, he is simply stepping in to his own story and a nightmare of his own making.
great novel
Posted by: maxx sin | 03/13/2020 at 10:16 AM