In interwar Munich, the writer Thomas Mann becomes embroiled in a supernatural conflict with his tailor, Klaus, who may have sold his soul to the devil. In rural Hungary, a boy named Marci Tamás is haunted by an ugly coat and invisible elephant that wants to take his place in the family. Another elephant invites Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, to desert the invasion of Rome to search for woolly mammoths.
Surreal, speculative, bizarre fiction has become a forte of the former Communist bloc, made popular in English by the likes of László Krasznahorkai and Vladimir Sorokin. Istvan Vörös’ novel is a new Hungarian entry in this grand tradition.
Everything here folds back in on itself – Thomas M. and M. Tamás, devils and elephants, the real and unreal – giving the book a vigor reminiscent of one of those unsettling dreams you have right before your morning alarm goes off.
Even so, Vörös manages to outdo the subconscious: I’ve never before dreamed of Hannibal transforming into a giant monument to have sex with the passing clouds
- Thomas Mann’s Overcoat – Istvan Vörös (trans. Ottilie Mulzet), Seagull Books
