Brother of Sleep - Robert Schneider
(Translated by Shaun Whiteside)
"Come, O death, O come, sleep's brother,
Lead me where thou dost decree"
This is a brutal, poetic, fable, set in Eschberg, an Austrian mountain village. It is set in the early nineteenth century and the dust of the dark ages hasn't been fully shaken off. In the isolated community inbreeding has exacerbated certain tendencies and idiot children, psychopaths and one towering, mysterious case of musical genius dominate the book.
I felt elements of American Southern Gothic in these truncated, inward looking lives filled with violence and strangeness but the most telling reference point would be the fairy tales collected by The Brothers Grimm. The writing style is that of a fireside storyteller, with the fire rising on occasion to consume the village Eschberg in flames that may constitute a judgement from God.
