'A book so astonishing that I immediately reread it, fearful it might disappear' Patti Smith
The war is over but Alexander Jessiersky, a wealthy Austrian aristocrat and industrialist, is haunted by guilt over the neighbour he inadvertently sent to a concentration camp, Count Luna. What's more, he is convinced that Luna survived - and is out to get his revenge. So begins a wild, weird cat-and-mouse chase that takes him and his shadowy nemesis through windswept valleys, eerie houses and, eventually, Rome's catacombs, as an increasingly paranoid Jessiersky asks himself: will Luna stop at nothing to exact his bloody vengeance? Crazed, raging and darkly comic, Count Luna is a reckoning with postwar guilt, and an irresistible tale of the uncanny.
'Like Kafka ... Lernet-Holenia weaves his most intimate hopes and dreams ... with exquisitely imagined detail' Chicago Tribune
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241649541
Number of pages: 160
Weight: 126 g
Dimensions: 198 x 130 x 10 mm
A book so astonishing that I immediately re-read it, fearful it might disappear - Patti Smith
Daunting panache, fast-moving, cleverly convoluted, terrific - Irish Times
In Count Luna, an industrialist inadvertently responsible for sending a man to a concentration camp feels certain that the fellow survived the war and is mounting a shadowy campaign of revenge. Like Kafka [...] Lernet-Holenia weaves his most intimate hopes and dreams into the texture of what happens next with exquisitely imagined detail - Chicago Tribune
This is a curious concoction - a 3.5 for me. It starts post-WWII, with the strange disappearance of Austrian industrialist Alexander Jessiersky, in the catacombs of Rome. The rest of the book skips back through... More
Alexander Jessiersky becomes obsessed with finding the eponymous Count Luna and his descent into paranoia is quite remarkable and compelling. There is an implied connection between Luna and lunar, depicting madness,... More
For a short period of the 19th century, Russian literature was permeated with a trope termed 'the superfluous man'. Though not exclusive to the works of Turgenev and Pushkin, this archetype was defined by... More
Please sign in to write a review
Would you like to proceed to the App store to download the Waterstones App?
