The Truth About Sascha Knisch

by Aris Fioretos

This elegant, hilarious novel, a biological thriller set in the steamy underworld of Weimar Berlin, deals with the lures and dangers of sex, and the passion between two young people. Clever, droll and stylish, the novel is couched in the form of a riddle. From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Fiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Aris Fioretos is a professor of Aesthetics at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden. He was educated at Stockholm and Yale Universities. The recipient of numerous prizes and fellowships, most recently from the Swedish Academy and All Souls College, Oxford, he has published several novels and book-length essays in his native Sweden and has rendered the works of Paul Auster, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Vladimir Nabokov into Swedish. His latest, award-winning novel is entitled The Last Greek (2009). Fioretos is also the general editor of the first commented edition of the complete works of Nelly Sachs in German.

Reviews

[Kokonöt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Om drift, att röka cig och om ett eventuellt mord i 20-talets Tyskland. Otroligt välskrivet!! Man baxnar. Men lite trist i längden med alla beskrivningar av sexuella böjelser och biologiskt och kulturellt kön.

[M M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Surely Aris Fioretos should be onto a winner. Imagine: a Greek-Austrian author who writes fiction in Swedish about sexual high jinks and extravagance in Weimar Germany, and then translates it himself into English. The implied versatility is mind-boggling. His The Truth About Sascha Knisch defeated the best efforts of the Complete Review, so I'm rather smug about having blundered my way through it. It is a strange admixture of wry humour and somewhat overblown prose. Sascha Knisch is a projectionist at a theatre in Berlin in 1928, freshly arrived from Vienna. His childhood buddy is now in the Berlin underworld. He has a peculiar fetish for dressing up in elegant women's outfits, and develops a relationship with a Dora Wilms. She dominates him but they also develop an affectionate understanding, which prompts him to begin investigating her murder (it doesn't help that he was in a closet in her room changing into a fancy dress when she is killed). Several pseudo-scientific societies promoting eugenics enter the story; their clashes and struggles for political domination, and competition between homicide and vice squads in the Berlin police all blend together into a strangely atmospheric novel. It feels almost like alternative history, is overly convoluted, baroque even, and none of the characters is particularly sympathetic, and it stretches on and on, but I must say I finished it with a feeling of achievement, if not satisfaction.

[Cititoare Calatoare · Rating 1 out of 5]

In Berlin 1928 traieste Sascha Knisch, un barbat caruia ii place sa se imbrace in tinute de dama elegante si este implicat intr-o poveste ciudata unde nimic nu este ce pare a fi.
Lucrand ca operator la cinematograful "Apollo", ajunge sa o reintalneasca pe Dora Wilms si are o aventura secreta cu aceasta. O saptamana mai tarziu, totul o ia razna cand politia descopera cadavrul Dorei, iar Knisch este principalul suspect. In incercarea de a-si dovedi nevinovatia, Sascha da de urma unei conspiratii stiintifice.
Desi se vrea un fel de thriller psihologic, pe mine nu m-a prins deloc.

[Ken Fredette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was really confused by all the facts. But would like to believe Dr. Gunnar Wickert's version.

[Razvan Banciu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Recunosc, pe când mă chinuiam din greu cu cele peste patru sute(!!!) de pagini de maculatură, mă gândeam la câte stele aș putea prăpădi pe o carte care mi-a plăcut deloc spre puțin.
De obicei, în astfel de cazuri, pun și osteneala cititorului la socoteală, dar scriitura domnului Fioretos este într-atât de proastă încât aproape că merită disprețuită.
Pe scurt, dacă vă plac poveștile cu hermafrodiți, androdgini, travestiți, fetișiști (și cu un pic de incest, să fie masa bogată), v-ați găsit lectura preferată. Dacă nu, NU! Iar pasionații de romane polițiste vor rămâne, la rândul lor, cel puțin nedumeriți, pentru că așa-zisa intrigă adună o serie de personaje dubioase, băltește bine câteva sute de pagini, pentru a se termina în coadă de pește.

Așadar, Adevărul despre Sascha Knisch e că este un KITSCH...

[omilojevic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Na trenutke interesantan, na trenutke zamoran, roman od koga sam mnogo više očekivala.

[Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actually, I give it meh-and-a-half. It's not a good sign that 100 pages into it, I was shocked to find out that the narrator was a man. (And that it mattered.) I looked back, and nope, no tipoffs of, you know, conventional stuff, like pants, other characters remarking "oh, why you're a man!" and so on. Perhaps it is because the story begins with the narrator in a closet--see, you see , a closet...in Weimar-era Berlin, a swoon, a peeping tom, etc? In a closet watching someone who may be cross-dressed, hearing someone enter an apartment, who may be female, who may murder the mysterious apt-dweller. There is a dead body, I know that for sure. The prose is dreadful, faux-sepia, and failed loucheness. It's not even redeemed by inventive decadence or good sexual/gender politics, or sheer boldness. There's a mystery girl, then she's a slut, then she's dead, and the narrator moons incessantly while he mooches off other friends you can't quite place and grows seedier. Is there nothing else going on in Vienna other than his suit getting progressively more ravelled with lint-pills? I hate novels about transgression that are utterly conventional.

I've never given a "1"-star before. Yow. I guess that means I don't have to finish it, and the moral of this story is don't let an endorsement by Kraft-Ebbing lead you astray...

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A transvestite attempts to piece together the events leading to the murder of a former lover. The plot is convoluted and, frankly, incomprehensible. That said, the narrator is not without charm, and the discussion of "deviant" sexuality interesting.