Schattenfroh

A besieged scribe copies out the book to end all books in the arcane and delirious English-language debut from Lentz. The writer is given the name Nobody by the infinitely cunning Schattenfroh, who lures Nobody into a dark “centroscriptorium,” where he’s imprisoned and outfitted with a mask that allows him to translate his thoughts (“brainfluid”) directly onto the pages of an infinitely revisable yet preordained book: the “founding script” of a heretical sect called the Frightbearing Society. He receives dictation from Schattenfroh, who is at once God, the devil, and Nobody’s deceased father, the former administrator of a German town devastated by an Allied firebombing in 1944. This trinity of authoritarian overseers makes and unmakes the text to its own liking, chastising Nobody for exercising his own voice. The teeming narrative compiles Boschean visions of damnation, Nobody’s family history, biblical apocrypha, folk tales, and much more, including an extended description of printing technologies both real and imagined. Along the way, Lentz takes readers on a deep exploration of the relationship between art, language, suffering, and redemption. For those willing to go the distance, this monumental and taxing work offers rich rewards. (Aug.)