Darkenbloom

A panoramic novel of European history, by an internationally bestselling writer.

The whole truth, as the name implies, is the collective knowledge of all those involved. Which is why you can never really piece it together again afterwards. Because some of those who possessed a part of it will already be dead. Or they're lying, or their memories are bad.

It's 1989, and in a small town on the Austria-Hungary border, nobody talks about the war; the older residents pretend not to remember, and the younger ones are too busy making plans to leave. The walls are thin, the curtains twitch, there is a face at every window, and everyone knows what they are not supposed to say.

But as thousands of East German refugees mass at the border, it seems that the past is knocking on Darkenbloom's door.

Still, though, nobody talks about the war.

Until a mysterious visitor shows up asking questions.

Until townspeople start receiving threatening letters and even disappearing.

Until a body is found.

Darkenbloom is a sweeping novel of exiled counts, Nazis-turned-Soviet-enforcers, secret marriages, mislabelled graves, remembrance, guilt, and the devastating power of silence, by one of Austria's most significant contemporary writers.

"It is Menasse's style - which is to say, the way she uses her narrator - that makes the case for her deep and original reimagining of history. This teasing, searching, playful, scathing voice, half inside the community and half outside it, sometimes as bland as soup and other times as sharp as death, recounts history as no responsible historian could."
- James Wood, The New Yorker

"Darkenbloom uses the historical case of Rechnitz to investigate the nature of guilt and remembrance, repression and confession, public memory and public amnesia more broadly ... Menasse is, above all else, an astute observer of human psychology. Her novel's narration roams between characters, whose chunks of worldview and life story form a panorama of the town's haunted present alongside moments where the author-narrator addresses the reader with direct commentary on the Darkenbloomers or reflections on the nature of memory itself ... In Menasse's thoughtful hands, the invented town of Darkenbloom is not a cipher for one specific historical event, but rather a stage to explore more universal concerns."
- Alexander Wells, The Guardian

"In Eva Menasse's historical novel Darkenbloom, the wartime secrets of a small Austrian town are compromised by the urgent demands of the present ... disturbing events are tempered by rich, omniscient knowledge of the characters, whose quirky humour and humanity amid an impeccable backdrop of clandestine forests and 'undulating, dappled' mountain views captivate. Heralding the expansive disruptions of social change, the intricate novel Darkenbloom muses through an Austrian town's troubled past."
- Foreword Reviews, starred review