The Right Hand of Sleep

The Right Hand of Sleep

Summary

Oskar Voxlauer is in flight from his past - from his bourgeois Austrian upbringing; from horrific memories of fighting on the Italian Front in 1917; and from the twenty years he has spent in the Ukraine watching his Bolshevik ideals crumble and the physical decline of the woman who taught him about love.

In 1938, he finally returns to the small Austrian town of his birth where his mother is waiting to greet a son she hasn't seen since he was a boy.

But, despite Oskar's attempts to live a reclusive existence as a gamekeeper up in the hills, he cannot escape the tensions that are threatening the tranquil town of Niessen. When Hitler marches into Austria and the Blackshirts come to the valley.

Reviews

  • The ghost hovering over this assured and astonishingly mature first novel is that of Joseph Roth... Wray's novel displays psychological acuity, a mastery of dialogue and an unfailing historical empathy
    Publishers Weekly

About the author

John Wray

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