Lost

A first novel hailed as Germany’s most exciting fiction debut of last year, “Lost” walks us into what we think is familiar territory and then suddenly turns all our expectations upside down. An ordinary German family flees from the advancing Russian army in 1945, makes it to safety, and starts over, painstakingly building a new life in the postwar economic miracle. But in the refugee trek west there was a victim, and that victim was the firstborn son, Arnold. “Arnold isn’t dead. He didn’t starve either”, is what the little brother is finally told by his parents when he is just eight years old. “I was just beginning to understand that Arnold, my undead brother, had the leading role in the family, and had assigned me a supporting part”. Finding Arnold is his parents’ dream. It is the little brother’s nightmare. Laconically distanced, often darkly and wickedly funny, “Lost” is the psychological and emotional roller coaster that follows, as seen through the eyes of the youngest, most subversive person in the novel.