We all know someone who is a great storyteller. Someone who can spin a yarn with the perfect amount of detail and humor and sexiness to keep your full attention, someone who has the natural gift. They’re letting it all flow through. That’s what it feels like to read this book. It’s like sitting with that friend who is damned good at telling stories, drinking a bunch of beers or wine, and talking shit about your hometown while ultimately loving it (and including enough nostalgia to make it resonate).

The witch is dead, murdered, left to rot in a drainage ditch. Who killed her and why? These questions initially drive the narrative, though it’s not long before we learn the answers. Yet, the question of why lingers and becomes the nucleus of what follows.

What are we to make of things that are neither didactic nor mimetic? I guess that could be the question of all literature after 1970 or so, especially when it’s something, like this book, that hints at things both familiar and revelatory, so that you feel like there’s a big Truth here if only you could interpret the work in the correct way. Of course, there’s always fractals of truth, both big and small. It’s just about choosing a lens from which to view them.

Of the five Krasznahorkai novels I’ve read, I want to talk about this one. This is what I’d recommend if you haven’t read anything by LK, and if you have not read anything by him, I hope this review encourages you to do so because, in my opinion, he’s one of the best novelists that we’ve got.