Twelve Nights

Fiction. Translated from the German by Anthony Vivis. To enter TWELVE NIGHTS, you must pass through a fractured threshold, placing one foot in lyric, the other in prose glittering with fairy tale and recent past. Ghosts are abroad; memories strike when least expected, biting like animals. These are the hopeful, forgetful times of reconstruction, where masks are exchanged, friends are mistrusted, and those who learned to survive the war betray signs of madness. "How long does misfortune slumber before it reawakens?" For Reinshagen's characters, remembrance is a heroic act. Their stories return to history its essential unreality, the inconceivable inseparable from its fact. An important figure in contemporary German literature and performance, Gerlind Reinshagen is both novelist and playwright, and a member of PEN Germany.