Read in English

The book concerns two dueling voices, an ex-Lutheran priest and his dead estranged father speaking from the grave as a frog in his son’s throat. The absurd premise belies what at first seems like fairly straightforward Bernhard imitation but then you realize that the two voices are speaking in tandem, over eachother, switching one from the other to back again. Once you understand the tells the father and son have its a bit easier to parse, the father is sick of the modern world and draws into reminiscing about his dead wife and traumatic conscription experience while his defrocked son falls back on biblical phrasing and ruminates on his ex-wife and the perceived tyranny of God and his fellow countrymen. Both are bitter about the world and are at loggerheads with eachother, but theres a shared alienation with the world the two harmonize around. Werner manages to execute on this unweidly-sounding premise causing a truly odd and enchating polyphonia that feels straight out of Faulkner. Truly charming little book.