Missing Persons

One of Germany's greatest contemporary novelists and playwrights, Lange's first appearance in English is a major event. The themes of absence pervade all the works in this unsettling, unusual collection. In The Poster, a German bank director, strolling though a park in Vienna, adds his name to a list of missing persons, thereby writing himself out of his humdrum life. Boarding a train to Venice, his travels intersect with that of a hooded stranger. The New Tenant mesmerizes the old concierge, with his mysterious comings and goings. And In Defence of Nothingness, the illness of a talented boy and the lack of communication within a family, ends in a horrific climax. In all the stories, the characters find themselves at the mercy of events over which they have no control, and which are perhaps not quite real… Missing Persons has been translated by Helen Atkins