A terrific short novel with a great idea at its core. This was banned by the Nazis. It isn't clear to me why except that there is one reference to supporter of the Reds in Russian, and certainly they would have been enemies of the Germans in 1933.
I really, really liked this one. It's so twisted! I thought it was a crime novel but no way -- this is a very dark book overflowing with paranoia, one that seriously played with my head. But The less one knows about the book before reading it, the better.
Young German doctor Georg Amberg awakens in hospital after an accident. Amberg's memories of the circumstances are not believed. He says he suffered a blow to the head from a flail a few days earlier but doctors insist he was knocked down by a car and has been in a coma for five weeks. The bulk of the novel is Amberg's recollection of events leading up to his accident, from the time he accepted a job as village doctor in rural Westphalia, where he meets Baron von Malchin, an old friend of Amberg's historian father, his estate manager, a White Russian exile, and Bibiche, a beautiful young scientist working with the Baron.
It's also a highly-satisfying novel I can recommend to anyone who, like me, loves obscure fiction.
