What do you think?
Rate this book
The Empress and the Cake
Madness lurks behind the pretty façade of everyday life.
An elderly lady offers a young woman a piece of cake. She accepts. The lady resembles the Austrian Empress Elisabeth and lives with her servant in an apartment full of bizarre souvenirs. More invitations follow. A seemingly harmless visit to the museum turns into a meticulously planned raid to steal a royal cocaine syringe. Without realizing, the young woman has become the lady’s accomplice. Does she realize she is losing control?
Why Peirene chose to publish this book:
'On the surface this is a clever thriller-cum-horror story of three women and their descent into addiction, crime and madness. And at times it’s very funny. But don’t be fooled. The book also offers an exploration of the way the mind creates its own realities and – quite often – deludes us into believing that we control what is actually controlling us. Uncanny, indeed.' Meike Ziervogel
An elderly lady offers a young woman a piece of cake. She accepts. The lady resembles the Austrian Empress Elisabeth and lives with her servant in an apartment full of bizarre souvenirs. More invitations follow. A seemingly harmless visit to the museum turns into a meticulously planned raid to steal a royal cocaine syringe. Without realizing, the young woman has become the lady’s accomplice. Does she realize she is losing control?
Why Peirene chose to publish this book:
'On the surface this is a clever thriller-cum-horror story of three women and their descent into addiction, crime and madness. And at times it’s very funny. But don’t be fooled. The book also offers an exploration of the way the mind creates its own realities and – quite often – deludes us into believing that we control what is actually controlling us. Uncanny, indeed.' Meike Ziervogel
172 pages, Paperback
First published August 31, 2007
3 people are currently reading
352 people want to read
About the author
Linda Stift
8 books2 followersLinda Stift studied German literature at the University of Vienna. She has published three novels to date: Kingpeng (2005), Stierhunger (2007) and Kein einziger Tag (2011).
She won the Alfred Gesswein Literaturpreis in 2007. She was also nominated for the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2009. Stierhunger was published in English as The Empress and the Cake by Peirene Press in 2016 in a translation by Jamie Bulloch.
She won the Alfred Gesswein Literaturpreis in 2007. She was also nominated for the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2009. Stierhunger was published in English as The Empress and the Cake by Peirene Press in 2016 in a translation by Jamie Bulloch.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
August 25, 2021
3+ I admit I bought the book for the title which I think is genius, although not nearly sinister enough for the actual novel. This is probably the most bonkers thing I've read this year. It must be the only book in existence to combine devastating bulimia, a heist for a royal cocaine syringe, real estate fraud, elderly people having sex on the kitchen table, an Austrian empress, dogs and blackmail. I'm not sure I understood it all, but if you crave some mitteleuropean madness (literally and figuratively), this will certainly deliver.
March 23, 2017
I am at that stage in my reading life where I purchase Peirene books without even reading their blurbs, almost certain as I am that I will enjoy them, and find them striking and thought-provoking. I have only been disappointed with one of their titles to date, and they firmly remain one of my favourite publishing houses. When I spotted a deal on the Kindle store for Linda Stift's The Empress and the Cake then, I jumped at the chance of buying it, and read it the very next day.
The Empress and the Cake has been translated from its original German by Jamie Bulloch, and is set in Vienna. Its Austrian author has won many awards for her writing. The novella is part of Peirene's Fairy Tale: End of Innocence series. Of it, Meike Ziervogel, the founder of Peirene Press, writes: 'On the surface this is a clever thriller-cum-horror story of three women and their descent into addiction, crime and madness. And at times it's very funny. But don't be fooled. The book also offers an exploration of the way the mind creates its own realities and - quite often - deludes us into believing that we control what is actually controlling us.'
The Empress and the Cake is split into two distinct parts, and opens with our narrator standing in a cake shop, where she sees a woman acting rather strangely: 'She had no intention, so it appeared, of buying anything; she simply seemed to enjoy gazing at the layers of light and dark chocolate, the white cream toppings and the colourful sugar decorations'. This woman, who later introduces herself as Frau Hohenembs, asks the narrator to share a splendidly named Gugelhupf with her. Without explanation, the narrator then follows Frau Hohenembs to her apartment, under the pretence of eating cake and drinking coffee: 'And I really didn't have a clue what I was going to do with half a Gugelhupf after stuffing myself with cake at this woman's place. Even contemplating what might happen with my share was giving me a headache.'
A distinct contrast to Frau Hohenembs is her housekeeper, Ida: Frau Hohenembs 'definitely fell into the category of thin, if not emaciated. [Overweight] Ida rapidly ate four pieces of cake, one after the other...'. We find, rather soon, that our narrator suffered with bulimia when she was younger, and the gluttony of eating of the cake - something which she would ordinarily avoid - brings on a relapse: 'The grotesque face of my abnormality, which had lain dormant within me, resurfaced. It was the first time in fifteen years. I had always known that there was no safety net. But I hadn't suspected that it would arrive so unspectacularly, that it would not be preceded by a disaster such as heartbreak or dismissal or a death.'
The present-day story is interspersed with extracts from a fairytale-like text, which allows the reader to muse somewhat upon whose story it is, and who is doing the telling of it. These sections render the whole peculiar, yet beguiling; there is almost a compulsion to keep reading. Stift has cleverly, in such a restricted space as a novella, presented an almost impossible plot to correctly guess at. The Empress and the Cake is rather unsettling, particularly toward the end, but if you like quirky and unusual books, it is one which is well worth picking up.
The Empress and the Cake has been translated from its original German by Jamie Bulloch, and is set in Vienna. Its Austrian author has won many awards for her writing. The novella is part of Peirene's Fairy Tale: End of Innocence series. Of it, Meike Ziervogel, the founder of Peirene Press, writes: 'On the surface this is a clever thriller-cum-horror story of three women and their descent into addiction, crime and madness. And at times it's very funny. But don't be fooled. The book also offers an exploration of the way the mind creates its own realities and - quite often - deludes us into believing that we control what is actually controlling us.'
The Empress and the Cake is split into two distinct parts, and opens with our narrator standing in a cake shop, where she sees a woman acting rather strangely: 'She had no intention, so it appeared, of buying anything; she simply seemed to enjoy gazing at the layers of light and dark chocolate, the white cream toppings and the colourful sugar decorations'. This woman, who later introduces herself as Frau Hohenembs, asks the narrator to share a splendidly named Gugelhupf with her. Without explanation, the narrator then follows Frau Hohenembs to her apartment, under the pretence of eating cake and drinking coffee: 'And I really didn't have a clue what I was going to do with half a Gugelhupf after stuffing myself with cake at this woman's place. Even contemplating what might happen with my share was giving me a headache.'
A distinct contrast to Frau Hohenembs is her housekeeper, Ida: Frau Hohenembs 'definitely fell into the category of thin, if not emaciated. [Overweight] Ida rapidly ate four pieces of cake, one after the other...'. We find, rather soon, that our narrator suffered with bulimia when she was younger, and the gluttony of eating of the cake - something which she would ordinarily avoid - brings on a relapse: 'The grotesque face of my abnormality, which had lain dormant within me, resurfaced. It was the first time in fifteen years. I had always known that there was no safety net. But I hadn't suspected that it would arrive so unspectacularly, that it would not be preceded by a disaster such as heartbreak or dismissal or a death.'
The present-day story is interspersed with extracts from a fairytale-like text, which allows the reader to muse somewhat upon whose story it is, and who is doing the telling of it. These sections render the whole peculiar, yet beguiling; there is almost a compulsion to keep reading. Stift has cleverly, in such a restricted space as a novella, presented an almost impossible plot to correctly guess at. The Empress and the Cake is rather unsettling, particularly toward the end, but if you like quirky and unusual books, it is one which is well worth picking up.
December 16, 2019
Never take candies from strangers, let alone a piece of gugelhupf—I Google it: a yeast based cake (often with raisins) common in Austria. Especially from a stranger who wear weird clothing. That's what I get from this quirky psychological thriller.
The story about obsession and madness started when a young woman accepted an offer from an old lady to share a cake and a cup of coffee in her apartment. The odd invitation continue to more invitations on odder engagements: stealing from a museum, adding thing to museum display (OK! That and the sex museum seem fun though), take part on weird pageantry. The whole things actually were quite unsettling. I want to scream to the young woman to run away from the old lady from the start. I mean, how can you trust someone who dressed like a 19th-century empress and cruel to her maid, right? The book also explained bulimic in details which quite disturbing and heartbreaking.
Told in parallel between current affair of the young woman as the narrator and similar stories that somehow seems happened in an empire of the past written with a hint of fairy tale, it's quite challenging at first. Toward the end, I think I can guess where the story is going to, but it's still jaw dropping nevertheless.
The story about obsession and madness started when a young woman accepted an offer from an old lady to share a cake and a cup of coffee in her apartment. The odd invitation continue to more invitations on odder engagements: stealing from a museum, adding thing to museum display (OK! That and the sex museum seem fun though), take part on weird pageantry. The whole things actually were quite unsettling. I want to scream to the young woman to run away from the old lady from the start. I mean, how can you trust someone who dressed like a 19th-century empress and cruel to her maid, right? The book also explained bulimic in details which quite disturbing and heartbreaking.
Told in parallel between current affair of the young woman as the narrator and similar stories that somehow seems happened in an empire of the past written with a hint of fairy tale, it's quite challenging at first. Toward the end, I think I can guess where the story is going to, but it's still jaw dropping nevertheless.
Read
April 7, 2017AKA Don't Read This Book If You're Emetophobic. Mixing such mundane horrors as letting agents, bulimia and bitten nails with echoes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this curious little novel of disgust and obsession reminded me of those quiet, introverted horror films about the gradual loss of self, shot through with a sexuality all the more fevered for being largely buried - Spider, Repulsion, stuff like that. Except of course that solitude is hardly the problem here, so maybe stories of toxic female intimacy such as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? would be a better comparison. The narrator proves increasingly unable to resist being drawn into the orbit of two peculiar women to whose crimes she becomes accomplice, and who simultaneously, unwittingly (or is it?) bring on a resurgence in her problems with food. Though there is one incongruously cheerful and cheerfully incongruous scene derived from a Viennese radio station playing Supergrass' debut single, it's otherwise a slide down a grim slope all the more distressing for the protagonist's constant insistence that really, this time, she's going to stop it. Regarding the Habsburg theme I would say more, except that even a bare bones description of the book was enough for one friend to guess which empress was intended, and I think pub quiz rules are fair here: if anyone knows it, nobody gets a clue.
*Seriously. Immediately before beginning this I read a volume of Nailbiter, and even that didn't have quite so much of a repelled fascination with bitten nails.
*Seriously. Immediately before beginning this I read a volume of Nailbiter, and even that didn't have quite so much of a repelled fascination with bitten nails.
April 29, 2020
A young woman is invited to share a Gugelhupf cake in a bakery in Vienna by an elderly lady dressed from head to toe in black, unaware that her acceptance will change her life.
This is part of Peirene's Fairy Tale series, though it is a blend of the historical and psycholgical thriller, as well as an examination of addiction.
The young woman, and narrator, is bulimic. The elderly woman, Frau Hohenembs, lives with her maid, Ida, and is obsessed with the Austrian Empress Elizabeth, or Sissi, as she was known. Frau Hohenembs and Ida are soon revealed as thieves of artifacts associated with the Empress from such palces as the Fool's Tower, and the Sex Museum, which they visit together.
Meanwhile, and interspersed, are segments of Sissi's biography and her eccentric fads, their relevance serving to make the story even more mysterious. The Empress's life story is quite an incredible one; particularly the story of her assassin, Luigi Luccheni, and his head.. and the tragedy a young African crippled dwarf, gifted to her as a playmate for her daughter.
So, what have we got here... an exceedingly strange tale of a wicked witch type character, luring an innocent into her clutches with the temptation of her weakness, tantalising food - an adult fairy tale that has elements of humour and horror while dealing with contemporary issues of addiction and modern slavery, with some fascinating snippets of Austrian history thrown in.
All this, and in a three hour read...
This is part of Peirene's Fairy Tale series, though it is a blend of the historical and psycholgical thriller, as well as an examination of addiction.
The young woman, and narrator, is bulimic. The elderly woman, Frau Hohenembs, lives with her maid, Ida, and is obsessed with the Austrian Empress Elizabeth, or Sissi, as she was known. Frau Hohenembs and Ida are soon revealed as thieves of artifacts associated with the Empress from such palces as the Fool's Tower, and the Sex Museum, which they visit together.
Meanwhile, and interspersed, are segments of Sissi's biography and her eccentric fads, their relevance serving to make the story even more mysterious. The Empress's life story is quite an incredible one; particularly the story of her assassin, Luigi Luccheni, and his head.. and the tragedy a young African crippled dwarf, gifted to her as a playmate for her daughter.
So, what have we got here... an exceedingly strange tale of a wicked witch type character, luring an innocent into her clutches with the temptation of her weakness, tantalising food - an adult fairy tale that has elements of humour and horror while dealing with contemporary issues of addiction and modern slavery, with some fascinating snippets of Austrian history thrown in.
All this, and in a three hour read...
September 18, 2016
The Empress and the Cake, by Linda Stift (translated by Jamie Bolloch), is the third and final book in the 2016 Peirene series, Fairy Tale: End of Innocence. These exquisite short works of fiction are the treasure discerning readers seek.
Set in Vienna, this latest tale centres around Frau Hohenembs, an elderly countess now living in a city apartment cluttered with objects from her past. She is cared for by a rotund housekeeper, Ida, who puts up with her mistress’s temper and quirks due to an oft repeated promise of a house in Corfu. The story is told from the point of view of a young women Frau Hohenembs meets at a local bakery. The countess offers a share of the cake she is buying and persuades the young woman to accompany her home, taking advantage of perceived weakness and a compliant nature.
Eating the cake triggers the young woman’s food addiction and she descends into a dangerous spiral of binge followed by purge. Meanwhile, Frau Hohenembs plans raids on city museums to reclaim items once owned by her icon, the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, referred to as Sissi.
Throughout the narrative are scattered anecdotes written by an unknown source who was close to the assassinated Empress, detailing episodes in her life. Sissi was obsessed with her looks, particularly her hair and weight. She observed a rigorous exercise regime and strictly controlled her diet. She would be sewn into her clothes and spend up to three hours a day having her exceptionally long hair styled and dressed.
Frau Hehenembs emulates this way of living, regularly berating Ida for lack of control in her consumption. When she notes that the young women, whose life she is now manipulating, has lost weight, she congratulates her even though the means by which this has occurred is evident.
The museum raids offer Frau Hehenembs a hold over her acolytes which she abuses dispassionately. When the young woman realises how she is being used she determines to escape.
There is a sinister undercurrent. The vagueness of the timeframe and the similarities between characters’ habits and foibles add shadows but also depth. The denouement is perfect.
The story is told with an elegant succinctness. The author understands that her readers will possess sufficient intelligence to read between the lines. The quality of the prose is a joy in itself, the spine tingling unfolding of the tale a pleasure to satisfy any literary palate.
There has been a trend recently for publishing big books. This offering proves that size is no indicator of value. I finished the story in a day but the pleasure lingers. You will feel no regrets indulging in this tale.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Peirene Press.
Set in Vienna, this latest tale centres around Frau Hohenembs, an elderly countess now living in a city apartment cluttered with objects from her past. She is cared for by a rotund housekeeper, Ida, who puts up with her mistress’s temper and quirks due to an oft repeated promise of a house in Corfu. The story is told from the point of view of a young women Frau Hohenembs meets at a local bakery. The countess offers a share of the cake she is buying and persuades the young woman to accompany her home, taking advantage of perceived weakness and a compliant nature.
Eating the cake triggers the young woman’s food addiction and she descends into a dangerous spiral of binge followed by purge. Meanwhile, Frau Hohenembs plans raids on city museums to reclaim items once owned by her icon, the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, referred to as Sissi.
Throughout the narrative are scattered anecdotes written by an unknown source who was close to the assassinated Empress, detailing episodes in her life. Sissi was obsessed with her looks, particularly her hair and weight. She observed a rigorous exercise regime and strictly controlled her diet. She would be sewn into her clothes and spend up to three hours a day having her exceptionally long hair styled and dressed.
Frau Hehenembs emulates this way of living, regularly berating Ida for lack of control in her consumption. When she notes that the young women, whose life she is now manipulating, has lost weight, she congratulates her even though the means by which this has occurred is evident.
The museum raids offer Frau Hehenembs a hold over her acolytes which she abuses dispassionately. When the young woman realises how she is being used she determines to escape.
There is a sinister undercurrent. The vagueness of the timeframe and the similarities between characters’ habits and foibles add shadows but also depth. The denouement is perfect.
The story is told with an elegant succinctness. The author understands that her readers will possess sufficient intelligence to read between the lines. The quality of the prose is a joy in itself, the spine tingling unfolding of the tale a pleasure to satisfy any literary palate.
There has been a trend recently for publishing big books. This offering proves that size is no indicator of value. I finished the story in a day but the pleasure lingers. You will feel no regrets indulging in this tale.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Peirene Press.
January 2, 2021
This book made my physically uncomfortable.
October 3, 2023
so unsettling i couldn’t put it down !!! also perfect timing reading it after i visited vienna
November 1, 2016
I received an ARC from Peirene Press.
This psychological thriller starts innocently enough with a kind old woman offering to split a cake with a young woman she meets outside of a bakery in Vienna. But Stift’s novella becomes gruesome, disturbing and haunting very quickly.
The old woman, whose name is Frau Hohenembs, is oddly dressed in all black and the young woman discovers that the old woman’s apartment is even stranger. Frau Hohenembs has an extensive collection of pictures and mementos of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria or Empress Sissi as many referred to her. The apartment is also packed with furniture, two caged parrots, an enormous dog and a portly servant named Ida. The young woman patiently observes these strange women while she has tea and eats her share of Gugelhupf. The first shocking twist in the book happens when the young woman returns home to her own flat, finishes the rest of her Gugelhupf as well as everything else in her refrigerator and forces herself to throw up the entire contents of her stomach.
There are two eerie and gruesome threads that run throughout the story, the first of which is an obsession with food, weight and vomiting. Stift vividl describes the narrator’s grisly decent into the full grip of bulimia and her constant obsession with the cycle of binging and purging:
"I was learning a new vomiting technique and was eating by colours. I started with chemical sweets such as bright-green gummy frogs or pink foam bacon bits or claret so-called laces and snakes. These took time to mix with the mush of food that followed, which meant that my vomiting could be monitored. I would puke until I’d arrived at this tough, lurid mass, so I could be sure I’d got everything out."
The narrator also weighs herself incessantly every few minutes on a pair of scales she purchases. She becomes obsessive about her weight and the size of her stomach. She is so consumed with food and vomiting that she stops working and only goes out of her flat every few days to go on a grocery shopping binge. She reveals throughout the course of the story that her mother and maternal grandfather also had an unnatural preoccupation with being thin and this fixation on weight affected her from a very early age. Her deep-seated psychological issues make her easy prey for the manipulative and controlling Frau Hohenembs.
The second theme that is woven throughout the narrative is that of control, both losing it and gaining it over others. Frau Hohenembs has an obsession with the Empress Sissi and pulls the young narrator into her plots to steal relics and artifacts that once belonged to the Empress. Frau Hohenembs first invites the narrator to a picnic after which they take a bizarre tour through a sex museum. Stift is a master at slowly developing the ways in which the older woman gains control over the younger woman’s life. At first she can’t say no to innocent outings that involve picnics and museums. The next significant turning point in this disturbing relationship is when Frau Hohenembs uses the young woman to steal a duck press from another museum in Vienna. This rather macabre kitchen instrument is used to squeeze the blood, bone marrow and other juices out of duck carcasses. Frau Hohenembs loves to drink the meat juices extracted from the press and throughout the novel she has Ida use the press so that she can always have her favorite drink on hand.
Frau Hohenembs uses this theft of the duck press to gain more control over the narrator’s life. She tells the young woman that if she doesn’t go on outings with her or help her out on her secret missions then she will report her to the police. Frau Hohenembs becomes progressively sinister and appears to have connections around Vienna that would help her to have the young woman prosecuted. The final, and most disturbing, theft that the trio carry out is stealing a cocaine syringe that belonged to the Empress Sissi from a pathology museum in Vienna. Frau Hohenembs then instructs the young woman on how to use it properly to inject the old woman with daily doses of cocaine.
By the end of the novella, the young narrator is trapped and completely controlled, not only by her eating disorder but also by this strange old woman and her maid. Straft is a master at building suspense and presenting an unexpected and frightening conclusion to her psychological thriller.
This is the third and final installment in the Peirene Fairy Tale series. All three books in the collection are very different but are all excellent. I don’t think I can choose a favorite from the series.
This psychological thriller starts innocently enough with a kind old woman offering to split a cake with a young woman she meets outside of a bakery in Vienna. But Stift’s novella becomes gruesome, disturbing and haunting very quickly.
The old woman, whose name is Frau Hohenembs, is oddly dressed in all black and the young woman discovers that the old woman’s apartment is even stranger. Frau Hohenembs has an extensive collection of pictures and mementos of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria or Empress Sissi as many referred to her. The apartment is also packed with furniture, two caged parrots, an enormous dog and a portly servant named Ida. The young woman patiently observes these strange women while she has tea and eats her share of Gugelhupf. The first shocking twist in the book happens when the young woman returns home to her own flat, finishes the rest of her Gugelhupf as well as everything else in her refrigerator and forces herself to throw up the entire contents of her stomach.
There are two eerie and gruesome threads that run throughout the story, the first of which is an obsession with food, weight and vomiting. Stift vividl describes the narrator’s grisly decent into the full grip of bulimia and her constant obsession with the cycle of binging and purging:
"I was learning a new vomiting technique and was eating by colours. I started with chemical sweets such as bright-green gummy frogs or pink foam bacon bits or claret so-called laces and snakes. These took time to mix with the mush of food that followed, which meant that my vomiting could be monitored. I would puke until I’d arrived at this tough, lurid mass, so I could be sure I’d got everything out."
The narrator also weighs herself incessantly every few minutes on a pair of scales she purchases. She becomes obsessive about her weight and the size of her stomach. She is so consumed with food and vomiting that she stops working and only goes out of her flat every few days to go on a grocery shopping binge. She reveals throughout the course of the story that her mother and maternal grandfather also had an unnatural preoccupation with being thin and this fixation on weight affected her from a very early age. Her deep-seated psychological issues make her easy prey for the manipulative and controlling Frau Hohenembs.
The second theme that is woven throughout the narrative is that of control, both losing it and gaining it over others. Frau Hohenembs has an obsession with the Empress Sissi and pulls the young narrator into her plots to steal relics and artifacts that once belonged to the Empress. Frau Hohenembs first invites the narrator to a picnic after which they take a bizarre tour through a sex museum. Stift is a master at slowly developing the ways in which the older woman gains control over the younger woman’s life. At first she can’t say no to innocent outings that involve picnics and museums. The next significant turning point in this disturbing relationship is when Frau Hohenembs uses the young woman to steal a duck press from another museum in Vienna. This rather macabre kitchen instrument is used to squeeze the blood, bone marrow and other juices out of duck carcasses. Frau Hohenembs loves to drink the meat juices extracted from the press and throughout the novel she has Ida use the press so that she can always have her favorite drink on hand.
Frau Hohenembs uses this theft of the duck press to gain more control over the narrator’s life. She tells the young woman that if she doesn’t go on outings with her or help her out on her secret missions then she will report her to the police. Frau Hohenembs becomes progressively sinister and appears to have connections around Vienna that would help her to have the young woman prosecuted. The final, and most disturbing, theft that the trio carry out is stealing a cocaine syringe that belonged to the Empress Sissi from a pathology museum in Vienna. Frau Hohenembs then instructs the young woman on how to use it properly to inject the old woman with daily doses of cocaine.
By the end of the novella, the young narrator is trapped and completely controlled, not only by her eating disorder but also by this strange old woman and her maid. Straft is a master at building suspense and presenting an unexpected and frightening conclusion to her psychological thriller.
This is the third and final installment in the Peirene Fairy Tale series. All three books in the collection are very different but are all excellent. I don’t think I can choose a favorite from the series.
September 2, 2019
The Empress and the Cake by Linda Stift is a story of obsession and madness.
Our narrator is walking past a cake shop in Vienna when an old lady asks her to share a Gugelhupf, because the shop only sells them whole.
“Would you like to share a Gugelhupf? A whole one is too much for me, and they don't sell them by the half here ... My apartment is just around the corner; please do me the honour of joining me for a cup of coffee and some cake. Only for a while, I shan’t keep you long.”
The older lady, Frau Hohenembs, bears a striking resemblance to the 19th-century Empress Elisabeth (also known as Sissi) and her apartment is stuffed with objects from the past, photograph from the 19th century, painting of Empress Elisabeth, gymnastic rings, a caged parrot, an ancient breed dog, a jar of human head. She is being cared by her sinister maid, Ida.
From the first page, we figure that our narrator is bulimic; scars on her knuckles (Russell's sign)
"Taking it back, she noticed the scars on my knuckles and raised her plucked eyebrows, which locked into sharp angles.
many narratives about being thin,
“so proud when I feel dizzy, because this meant I was thin.”
And the gory details of vomiting.
“I was learning a new vomiting technique and was eating by colours. I started with chemical sweets such as bright green gummy frogs or pink foam bacon bits or claret so called laces and snakes. These took time to mix with the mush of food that followed, which meant that my vomiting could be monitored. I would puke until I’d arrived at this though, lurid mass, so I could be sure I’d got everything out. I always ate chocolate, ice cream, or cakes and tarts at the end, so that these things would be regurgitated first of all. This gave me the guarantee that they’d be completely out of my body.”
Her deep-seated psychological issues make her easy prey for the manipulative and controlling Frau Hohenembs. Frau Hohenembs often compliments her on losing weight as much as luring her into food. Without realizing, our narrator slowly losing control of herself and get involved in bizzare situations. Starting from visiting sex museum, stealing antique duck press from a museum, blowing up the statue of the empress in a Viennese park, "returning" the head of Luigi Lucheni to another museum, stealing the empress' cocaine syringe. Being threatened to be reporting, our narrator continued to fulfil the older woman's requests.
Eventually, our narrator is forced to compete in Miss Sissi 2007.
"The winner would receive her weight in original Viennese violet pralines. We're going to win those pralines, Frau Hohenembs giggled, with a hand to her mouth. Then she frowned and said grimly, Besides, we have to stop one of those bogus Sissis from winning. I can picture exactly how tasteless these women are going to look when they turn up. I'm too old, unfortunately, but you could do it. As usual she did not ask for my opinions."
By the end of the story, the young narrator is trapped and completely controlled, not only by her eating disorder but also by this strange old woman and her maid. Stift is great at building suspense and presenting an unexpected and frightening conclusion to this psychological thriller.
The story is told with an elegant succinctness. Stift leads me to read between the lines. I also appreciate the scattered anecdotes detailing episodes in the empress' life. It gives me more insight about her obsession with looks (particularly hair and weight). She observed a rigorous exercise regime and strictly controlled her diet. She would be sewn into her clothes and spend up to three hours a day having her exceptionally long hair styled and dressed.
Our narrator is walking past a cake shop in Vienna when an old lady asks her to share a Gugelhupf, because the shop only sells them whole.
“Would you like to share a Gugelhupf? A whole one is too much for me, and they don't sell them by the half here ... My apartment is just around the corner; please do me the honour of joining me for a cup of coffee and some cake. Only for a while, I shan’t keep you long.”
The older lady, Frau Hohenembs, bears a striking resemblance to the 19th-century Empress Elisabeth (also known as Sissi) and her apartment is stuffed with objects from the past, photograph from the 19th century, painting of Empress Elisabeth, gymnastic rings, a caged parrot, an ancient breed dog, a jar of human head. She is being cared by her sinister maid, Ida.
From the first page, we figure that our narrator is bulimic; scars on her knuckles (Russell's sign)
"Taking it back, she noticed the scars on my knuckles and raised her plucked eyebrows, which locked into sharp angles.
many narratives about being thin,
“so proud when I feel dizzy, because this meant I was thin.”
And the gory details of vomiting.
“I was learning a new vomiting technique and was eating by colours. I started with chemical sweets such as bright green gummy frogs or pink foam bacon bits or claret so called laces and snakes. These took time to mix with the mush of food that followed, which meant that my vomiting could be monitored. I would puke until I’d arrived at this though, lurid mass, so I could be sure I’d got everything out. I always ate chocolate, ice cream, or cakes and tarts at the end, so that these things would be regurgitated first of all. This gave me the guarantee that they’d be completely out of my body.”
Her deep-seated psychological issues make her easy prey for the manipulative and controlling Frau Hohenembs. Frau Hohenembs often compliments her on losing weight as much as luring her into food. Without realizing, our narrator slowly losing control of herself and get involved in bizzare situations. Starting from visiting sex museum, stealing antique duck press from a museum, blowing up the statue of the empress in a Viennese park, "returning" the head of Luigi Lucheni to another museum, stealing the empress' cocaine syringe. Being threatened to be reporting, our narrator continued to fulfil the older woman's requests.
Eventually, our narrator is forced to compete in Miss Sissi 2007.
"The winner would receive her weight in original Viennese violet pralines. We're going to win those pralines, Frau Hohenembs giggled, with a hand to her mouth. Then she frowned and said grimly, Besides, we have to stop one of those bogus Sissis from winning. I can picture exactly how tasteless these women are going to look when they turn up. I'm too old, unfortunately, but you could do it. As usual she did not ask for my opinions."
By the end of the story, the young narrator is trapped and completely controlled, not only by her eating disorder but also by this strange old woman and her maid. Stift is great at building suspense and presenting an unexpected and frightening conclusion to this psychological thriller.
The story is told with an elegant succinctness. Stift leads me to read between the lines. I also appreciate the scattered anecdotes detailing episodes in the empress' life. It gives me more insight about her obsession with looks (particularly hair and weight). She observed a rigorous exercise regime and strictly controlled her diet. She would be sewn into her clothes and spend up to three hours a day having her exceptionally long hair styled and dressed.
November 2, 2016
A compelling short book about compulsion, cake, and duck presses. A meeting with an Frau Hohenembs in a cake shop leads the narrator to relapse into her eating disorder as her relationship with the lady deepens and becomes more dependent. Frau Hohenembs believes she is the Empress Elizabeth (or perhaps she really is), and the narrator is drawn into being an accomplice in actions to regain the Empress's possessions (including a duck press and a cocaine syringe). The book is well paced, so that none of this seems too out-of-place as it happens; like the narrator, we are drawn gradually but inescapably into Frau Hohenembs world.
This is another great fit in Peirene Press's fairy tales series. It is up-to-date and avoids fairy tale cliche whilst maintaining an unheimlich atmosphere. It is just other enough to haunt, whilst being rooted enough in the everyday to resonate with the readers own compulsions, whatever they may be. Like the best literature it is a mirror on ourselves as well as a window in the world. Jamie Bulloch's translation rounds off a fantastic year from Periene Press.
This is another great fit in Peirene Press's fairy tales series. It is up-to-date and avoids fairy tale cliche whilst maintaining an unheimlich atmosphere. It is just other enough to haunt, whilst being rooted enough in the everyday to resonate with the readers own compulsions, whatever they may be. Like the best literature it is a mirror on ourselves as well as a window in the world. Jamie Bulloch's translation rounds off a fantastic year from Periene Press.
January 26, 2025
The narrator, unnamed, is consumed by her weight and the most severe methods to keep it down; Frau Hohenembs, a character who becomes increasingly more sinister, becomes her keeper in a succession of quick manipulations along with Ida, her conspicuously overweight companion/forced-servant-type(?). I was very intrigued by the significance of Charlotte, a friend who the narrator references numerous times but never attempts to contact.
September 1, 2025
Peirene #21 : Fairy Tale Series
Someone here on GR described this as “bonkers” and that is probably that best one-word description for this novella. It is bonkers on so many levels but brilliant and somewhat disturbing at the same time. Here is a young protagonist reminiscent of Ottessa Moshfegh’s iconic female characters caught in this web of mayhem committing crimes and reliving the life and times of Empress Sissi in Vienna. Another great volume in Peirene’s catalog.
Someone here on GR described this as “bonkers” and that is probably that best one-word description for this novella. It is bonkers on so many levels but brilliant and somewhat disturbing at the same time. Here is a young protagonist reminiscent of Ottessa Moshfegh’s iconic female characters caught in this web of mayhem committing crimes and reliving the life and times of Empress Sissi in Vienna. Another great volume in Peirene’s catalog.
June 30, 2021
‘my year of rest and relaxation’ meets ‘the great’. reading this was sort of like eating too many macaroons: kind of sickly sweet and very, very bitter.
September 7, 2017
The Empress and the Cake is about a young woman's bulimia, but it's also about an elderly woman's obsession with the Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898), best known to many as "Sissi." After the surprising dedication ("For me") and a suitably decadent epigraph ("I can't eat as much as I'd like to vomit" - Max Liebermann, 1933), the novel starts when the unnamed narrator, a woman in her 30s, is approached by a strange elderly woman who bullies her into buying a slice of Gugelhupf cake, then eat it at the elderly woman's apartment. This triggers the narrator's bulimia, which she'd managed to stave off for an unspecified number of years, but it also gets her all tangled up into the world's nichest web of crime, as the elderly woman (whose name is Frau Hohenembs) and her maid (Ida) take her on Sissi-themed heist after Sissi-themed heist, culminating in their theft of Sissi's very own cocaine syringe. (And then culminating again with a Sissi lookalike ball to end all Sissi lookalike balls.)
To read my full review, head over to my blog, Strange Bookfellows: https://strangebookfellowsblog.wordpr...
To read my full review, head over to my blog, Strange Bookfellows: https://strangebookfellowsblog.wordpr...
June 30, 2017
Contemporary Vienna...and cakes!...a sapphic bulimic protagonist/heroine is caught in the surreal web of an eccentric, aristocratic elder,Frau Hohenembs and her put-upon personal assistant Ida, who bear an uncanny, stylised resemblance to the late Empress Elisabeth ('Sissi') & her Hungarian companion (who suplies italicised fragments of her memoir of the famous victim of assassination!) . A madcap romp through the streets & parks of Vienna with a cast of odd characters; graphic descriptions of the ravages of rampant bulimia,cream cakes & jagged sexual encounters, enlighten the zany parade of improbabilities, making this a strangely absorbing piece of modernist (21st c.?) literature with odd 19th. century flourishes. Very Viennese, in fact. The translation reads smoothly; credit to publisher Pereine Press, for a classy presentation too.
January 5, 2024
Bizar en bevreemdend. Een verhaal over drie vrouwen. Een vrouw met een eetstoornis (boulimie) komt in de ban van een vrouw die als het ware de reïncarnatie is van Keizerin Elisabeth (Sissi) en haar kamenier. Met z'n gedrieën dalen zij af in een spiraal van verslaving, misdaad en waanzin. Het verhaal wordt verteld door de vrouw met de eetstoornis en wordt doorspekt met passages over het leven van Keizerin Elisabeth, of is het de kamenier van Sissi?
Soms is het grappig, maar laat je niet misleiden. Het boek is een verkenning van de manier waarop de geest zijn eigen realiteiten creëert en ons – heel vaak – voor de gek houdt door te geloven dat we controle hebben over wat ons feitelijk controleert. Want uiteindelijk is dàt de essentie van het verhaal, eens je gevangen bent in een netwerk, is er geen ontkomen meer aan, hoezeer je jezelf dat ook mag inbeelden.
Soms is het grappig, maar laat je niet misleiden. Het boek is een verkenning van de manier waarop de geest zijn eigen realiteiten creëert en ons – heel vaak – voor de gek houdt door te geloven dat we controle hebben over wat ons feitelijk controleert. Want uiteindelijk is dàt de essentie van het verhaal, eens je gevangen bent in een netwerk, is er geen ontkomen meer aan, hoezeer je jezelf dat ook mag inbeelden.
August 9, 2020
With its forays into psychology and history, this book is both disconcerting and entertaining. I was not sure if I wanted to read it because of my own complicated relationship with food. But the voice is factual and straightforward and it tells a story of bulimia without sensationalism and captures these three troubled women with care and wit. The overarching metaphor of self-harm (which I consider to be the central aspect of the book) can be emulated for a more compassionate portrayal of mental health and psychosocial disability in literature, without foregoing the rawness and lived experiences of it.
October 13, 2018
I always look out for Peirene publications. They specialise in books in translations, which I like very much. I love travelling, I like informing myself about other cultures, other nations.
The title of this one, attracted me. It takes place in Austria. A young woman is staring at a cake shop window. An elderly lady, The Empress, offers her a cake and invites her to share it in her home. Then starts for her the fall into obsession with food and the control that The Empress has over her. The two main themes.
I quite enjoyed it, for its human characteristics, well described and interesting.
The title of this one, attracted me. It takes place in Austria. A young woman is staring at a cake shop window. An elderly lady, The Empress, offers her a cake and invites her to share it in her home. Then starts for her the fall into obsession with food and the control that The Empress has over her. The two main themes.
I quite enjoyed it, for its human characteristics, well described and interesting.
February 13, 2020
Imagine a European Arthouse film, something that is both within grasp of understanding and yet still somehow outside of it. This is essentially The Empress and the Cake.
Interesting, confronting, weird and sad to read it is a fascinating little book about the loss of self and low confidence. TW includes anoreixa and bullemia which is quite brutal to read.
Interesting, confronting, weird and sad to read it is a fascinating little book about the loss of self and low confidence. TW includes anoreixa and bullemia which is quite brutal to read.
June 23, 2021
TW: eating disorders and bulimia
What an unbelievably odd book. I feel like I shouldn’t have enjoyed it because it was so disgusting and weird, but it was also hilarious and ridiculous and very fun to read.
I will never read it again though. I will also be very careful with who I recommend it to.
What an unbelievably odd book. I feel like I shouldn’t have enjoyed it because it was so disgusting and weird, but it was also hilarious and ridiculous and very fun to read.
I will never read it again though. I will also be very careful with who I recommend it to.
December 24, 2016
A very odd book set in modern Vienna where a sinister old lady and her servant draw a young anorexic into their weird lifestyle interspersed with stories about the Empress Elisabeth (Sissi).
March 6, 2019
Strongly disliked. I think I missed the point of this novella entirely. Pretty gross too. Not for me!!!
June 18, 2021
couldn't appreciate it. frankly quite triggering for people with EDs and too elusive in its main message that i completely doubted if there was any intelligent point to it.
Read
July 2, 2021gave up at p34
January 8, 2025
**4.5
nooo don't put jars of vomit under ur bed ur too sexy xxx
nooo don't put jars of vomit under ur bed ur too sexy xxx
September 30, 2016
I couldn't get into the book at the begging. But slowly the story completely engaged me and even now, after almost two weeks of finishing, I cannot stop thinking of it.
The book has so many layers and deals with so many issues: bulimia, controlling, addiction.
And, here is an amazing review written by Nicholas Lezard, published in The Guardian on 28/09/16:
An unnamed young woman is invited by an elderly one to share a cake – known in Austria as Gugelhupf – and a nightmare begins. The older woman, Frau Hohenembs, has noticed scars on the younger woman’s knuckles: an identifier of bulimia, caused by the teeth as the hand reaches down the throat to stimulate the gag reflex. Frau Hohenembs, in the present day, bears a striking resemblance to the 19th-century Empress Elisabeth, and she and her sinister housekeeper, Ida, draw the narrator into their lives, implicating her in increasingly bizarre situations: the blowing up of a statue of the empress in a Viennese park; the theft of a 19th-century cocaine syringe, in whose use the narrator is then instructed. She is even forced to enter an Empress Sissi (Elisabeth’s nickname) lookalike competition.
This is, in short, one of the oddest novels I have ever read, and also one of the most disturbing. The erosion of the narrator’s will is horrifying to watch, although at times what we are seeing is so freakish that the most appropriate reaction is a shocked kind of laughter – the trip the three of them take to a sex museum being a memorable example.
I suspect there is a lot more going on than what we see on the surface. We are, after all, in the city of Sigmund Freud, where you learn to look beneath the superficial and stay alert for the concealed pun. So I wonder whether the names Hohenembs and Ida have not been carefully picked; “Hohenembs” is, to cut a long heraldic story short, a very posh Austrian name, suggestive of authority, and “Ida” is, of course, mainly composed of the Id; this would fit well with Ida’s grossness and appetites. However, I should stress that this is not a point the novel belabours. The name “Ida” may only be coincidentally connected to “Id”, but then again, as Freud taught us, there are no coincidences.
The Empress and the Cake is Stift’s second novel, originally published in 2007. It is all about appetite, and its torments: its title in German is “Stierhunger”, or bulimia (this is a direct translation from the Greek, ox-hunger. Incidentally, I think the translator’s name, Jamie Bulloch, really is a coincidence). The narrator goes into some detail about her condition and obsessive, toxic engagement with food, which makes the atmosphere all the more oppressive. There is a remorseless anti-logic to bulimia, which fits neatly with the book’s own remorseless progress, composed as it is with all the logic of a bad dream.
You could say the story is a portrait of a diseased Austro-Hungarian soul: the narrative is interspersed with italicised vignettes from the life of the empress who – to her family’s distaste, if not horror – used to adore speaking Hungarian (not the done thing in the higher reaches of the Austro-Hungarian court). She would travel incognito among the Viennese and go for long walks during which she would shake off the secret agents sent to follow her; she was eventually assassinated by the anarchist Luigi Lucheni in Geneva.
Frau Hohenembs’s relationship with Ida is a corrupted counterpart to the empress’s relationship with her beloved lady-in-waiting, Countess Irma Sztáray, and she has, without any adequate explanation I could see, the preserved head of Lucheni in her possession.
Stift has been compared to Kafka, and it isn’t hard to see why, though I think a few nuances are lost on a British audience. The book is not an easy read by virtue of its being so disturbing. That said, it is once again a great credit to the enterprising Peirene Press, which has carved out quite a niche for itself in bringing us Weird Contemporary European Novels. (Often, as I have pointed out before, with strange matriarchal figures. Is this a mitteleuropean thing?) Long may it continue to do so.
The book has so many layers and deals with so many issues: bulimia, controlling, addiction.
And, here is an amazing review written by Nicholas Lezard, published in The Guardian on 28/09/16:
An unnamed young woman is invited by an elderly one to share a cake – known in Austria as Gugelhupf – and a nightmare begins. The older woman, Frau Hohenembs, has noticed scars on the younger woman’s knuckles: an identifier of bulimia, caused by the teeth as the hand reaches down the throat to stimulate the gag reflex. Frau Hohenembs, in the present day, bears a striking resemblance to the 19th-century Empress Elisabeth, and she and her sinister housekeeper, Ida, draw the narrator into their lives, implicating her in increasingly bizarre situations: the blowing up of a statue of the empress in a Viennese park; the theft of a 19th-century cocaine syringe, in whose use the narrator is then instructed. She is even forced to enter an Empress Sissi (Elisabeth’s nickname) lookalike competition.
This is, in short, one of the oddest novels I have ever read, and also one of the most disturbing. The erosion of the narrator’s will is horrifying to watch, although at times what we are seeing is so freakish that the most appropriate reaction is a shocked kind of laughter – the trip the three of them take to a sex museum being a memorable example.
I suspect there is a lot more going on than what we see on the surface. We are, after all, in the city of Sigmund Freud, where you learn to look beneath the superficial and stay alert for the concealed pun. So I wonder whether the names Hohenembs and Ida have not been carefully picked; “Hohenembs” is, to cut a long heraldic story short, a very posh Austrian name, suggestive of authority, and “Ida” is, of course, mainly composed of the Id; this would fit well with Ida’s grossness and appetites. However, I should stress that this is not a point the novel belabours. The name “Ida” may only be coincidentally connected to “Id”, but then again, as Freud taught us, there are no coincidences.
The Empress and the Cake is Stift’s second novel, originally published in 2007. It is all about appetite, and its torments: its title in German is “Stierhunger”, or bulimia (this is a direct translation from the Greek, ox-hunger. Incidentally, I think the translator’s name, Jamie Bulloch, really is a coincidence). The narrator goes into some detail about her condition and obsessive, toxic engagement with food, which makes the atmosphere all the more oppressive. There is a remorseless anti-logic to bulimia, which fits neatly with the book’s own remorseless progress, composed as it is with all the logic of a bad dream.
You could say the story is a portrait of a diseased Austro-Hungarian soul: the narrative is interspersed with italicised vignettes from the life of the empress who – to her family’s distaste, if not horror – used to adore speaking Hungarian (not the done thing in the higher reaches of the Austro-Hungarian court). She would travel incognito among the Viennese and go for long walks during which she would shake off the secret agents sent to follow her; she was eventually assassinated by the anarchist Luigi Lucheni in Geneva.
Frau Hohenembs’s relationship with Ida is a corrupted counterpart to the empress’s relationship with her beloved lady-in-waiting, Countess Irma Sztáray, and she has, without any adequate explanation I could see, the preserved head of Lucheni in her possession.
Stift has been compared to Kafka, and it isn’t hard to see why, though I think a few nuances are lost on a British audience. The book is not an easy read by virtue of its being so disturbing. That said, it is once again a great credit to the enterprising Peirene Press, which has carved out quite a niche for itself in bringing us Weird Contemporary European Novels. (Often, as I have pointed out before, with strange matriarchal figures. Is this a mitteleuropean thing?) Long may it continue to do so.
August 27, 2017
The narrator is walking past a cake shop in Vienna when an old lady asks her to share a Gugelhupf (a yeasted cake common in Austria), because the shop only sells them whole. This turns into an invitation to the home of Frau Hohenembs, where she is quite forcefully encouraged to help eat the cake. At first the narrator’s unwillingness to partake seems like the usual misgivings of a woman watching her figure. Then she goes home and eats her half of the cake then makes herself throw up.
Yes, it’s a story about bulimia. And it doesn’t romanticise or shy away from the details. It turns out that the narrator has been keeping her illness at bay for years, but now that she has been triggered, she spirals downward. Soon, the only other thing in her life is her growing relationship with Frau Hohenembs and her housekeeper Ida. And it’s a weird relationship, with some weird people.
Read my full review: http://www.noseinabook.co.uk/2017/08/...
Yes, it’s a story about bulimia. And it doesn’t romanticise or shy away from the details. It turns out that the narrator has been keeping her illness at bay for years, but now that she has been triggered, she spirals downward. Soon, the only other thing in her life is her growing relationship with Frau Hohenembs and her housekeeper Ida. And it’s a weird relationship, with some weird people.
Read my full review: http://www.noseinabook.co.uk/2017/08/...
October 14, 2016
I was sent this book to read and review
This book is a fairy tale like no other I have ever read.
It is set in Vienna, AUstria and follows Countess Hohenembs who lives in her home with caretaker Ida surrounded by objects from her life. Ida puts up with more than her fair share of her mistress's foul temper.
The countess at a bakery meets a young girl and offers her a share of her cake. She entices her to her home where the girl has bouts of binging through her ongoing problems of her eating disorder.
In the story you also find that the countess is behind plans to steal items from a museum which were once owned by the Empress of Austria.
In my mind this book turned out to be a short disturbing novel which at some points I couldn't wait to put down and think of something else. I found it a difficult book to read and in my opinion this could be classed more of a horror story - not my cup of tea at all
This book is a fairy tale like no other I have ever read.
It is set in Vienna, AUstria and follows Countess Hohenembs who lives in her home with caretaker Ida surrounded by objects from her life. Ida puts up with more than her fair share of her mistress's foul temper.
The countess at a bakery meets a young girl and offers her a share of her cake. She entices her to her home where the girl has bouts of binging through her ongoing problems of her eating disorder.
In the story you also find that the countess is behind plans to steal items from a museum which were once owned by the Empress of Austria.
In my mind this book turned out to be a short disturbing novel which at some points I couldn't wait to put down and think of something else. I found it a difficult book to read and in my opinion this could be classed more of a horror story - not my cup of tea at all
September 26, 2016
I found the descriptions of her dedication to her illness particularly striking: the obsession with food and with the most effective way of eliminating it from her body. Although I think those with an existing knowledge of Empress Elisabeth might get more from it, I did enjoy this peculiar tale.
Full review http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/1/post/...
Full review http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/1/post/...
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews