Spiel

by David Sornig

Berlin, New Years Eve. A young architect abandons the apocalyptic heat of a Melbourne summer for the streets his grandfather once walker. Barely off the train, a blind woman invites him to play a game. The Spiel has begun. When the pair narrowly escape a bomb blast the woman disappears, leaving only the name that has haunted the architect since childhood - Rosa Stumm. But who is Rosa Stumm In his vertiginous hunt for her, obsession and past collapse, dream and destiny are blurred, and imaginations collide. The architect must now face the scars left by the terrible legacy of his ancestry and atone for the life he left in Australia.

256 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2009

Reviews

[Gavan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow - what a book. An absorbing blend of literature and speculative fiction. Themes of "fitting in", 20th century German history, sex & desire. I don't think it's giving too much away to say that the first person narrator becomes gradually more unreliable as the book unfolds (or was it that I became more conscious of his unreliability; or was he reliable, it's just that weird stuff was happening?). Would have been 5 stars if I'd been able to figure out what was going on! But I strangely found the difficulty of trying to figure out what was happening some of the charm of the book - almost dreamlike where things make sense on the surface but make less sense the more you think about them ...

[Nick Kovronskiy]

Boah Fourth Wing scheint ja grad echt in aller Munde zu sein. Ich liebe Bücher, die Drachen und Magie kombinieren, auch wenn mir manchmal die Lovestorys zu kitschig werden. Neben dem Lesen gönn ich mir manchmal ne kleine Ablenkung und checke die Quoten auf https://bpremium-de.com/ find das voll interessant, wie sich Wahrscheinlichkeiten verändern. Geht’s noch jemandem so, dass man sich nach Fantasy-Büchern auch nach ein bisschen Nervenkitzel sehnt?

[Chris Patrick Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's definitely a good book, well written and a good time to read. I think my issue is with the development in the German storyline, which only feels as if its beginning when the book comes to a close. More events in that storyline would have improved it greatly, but it's still a thumbs up from me - the Melbourne flashback stuff is much stronger than the Germany current day stuff.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't work out if I liked it or not. There were parts I really liked and was absorbed by, especially the Melbourne stuff. Some of the writing felt deliberately arty and obfuscatory though.
On the whole, I think I liked it.

[Margot McGovern]

F#*%ing brilliant--Read it!