Published by Little Brown,
15 January 2015.
ISBN:978-1-4087-0582-7(pb)
15 January 2015.
ISBN:978-1-4087-0582-7(pb)
Sebastian von Eschburg, born into an aristocratic
family from the German province of Southern Bavaria, once rich but now no more so,
had a pretty wretched childhood. His parents were more concerned in ensuring
that his behaviour conformed with their notions of how children should behave
than in showing him love. At the age of 10 he was sent to a Benedictine
boarding school; there he was not particularly maltreated and he discovered the
pleasures of reading, retreating into a world that was more acceptable to him
than reality. He also discovered that his visual senses were especially strong,
enabling him to see the world in a myriad of colours. But when his father kills
himself his mother sells the family home and buys an equestrian centre. Soon
she has a lover and there is little room in her life for Sebastian who more and
more is thrown back on himself. He meets a former pupil of the school who has
become a photographer; Sebastian is attracted to the medium, specifically the
industrial images: 'no human beings in them, harsh photographs with a backdrop
of pale gray skies.” He becomes a professional photographer, earning his
bread-and-butter through wedding photographs, graduation ceremonies and the
like, but also establishing a reputation as an art photographer. He starts a
relationship with a woman called Sofia and she is the model in a number of
daring photographs which are both erotic and surreal and really make his name.
The narrative then shifts to Monika Landau, a public prosecutor who is
presiding over the highly aggressive questioning of Sebastian on a charge of
murder of a young woman – no name, no body but evidence through bloodstained
photographs, moreover a charge to which Sebastian has confessed.
The narrative shifts again to Konrad Biegler, Sebastian's defence lawyer, a man of great experience who has featured in an earlier novel, The Collini Case. Biegler himself is going through something of a mid-life crisis and has been despatched by his wife to a hotel in the mountains to sort himself out but when he hears of this case he hurries back, anxious to rejoin the world he knows. The hearing turns on the circumstances in which Sebastian's confession was made; if it was made under the threat of violence it is inadmissible no matter how willing Sebastian was to make it.
The narrative shifts again to Konrad Biegler, Sebastian's defence lawyer, a man of great experience who has featured in an earlier novel, The Collini Case. Biegler himself is going through something of a mid-life crisis and has been despatched by his wife to a hotel in the mountains to sort himself out but when he hears of this case he hurries back, anxious to rejoin the world he knows. The hearing turns on the circumstances in which Sebastian's confession was made; if it was made under the threat of violence it is inadmissible no matter how willing Sebastian was to make it.
The author is a prominent
defence lawyer in Germany. I found the chapters on the trial itself
particularly interesting. The theme of the novel becomes apparent at the end;
it is the contrast between reality and illusion, between deception and truth.
The translation is excellent. Recommended.
------
Reviewer: Radmila May
Ferdinand von Schirach was
born in 1964 in Munich, Germany. He is a German lawyer and writer. He
published his first short stories at the
age of forty-five. Shortly thereafter he became one of Germany's most
successful authors. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have
made him "an internationally celebrated star of German literature."
Schirach's books has been translated into more than 35 languages
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