Synopses & Reviews
Martin Mosebachs novel
What Was Before opens with a young couple enjoying a moment of carefree intimacy. Then the young woman, turning slightly more serious, asks her lover that fateful question, one that sounds so innocent but carries toxic seeds of jealousy: What was your life like before you met me? The answer grows into an entire book, an elaborate house of cards, filled with intrigue, sex, betrayal, exotic birds, and far-flung locations.
Set against the backdrop of Frankfurts affluent suburbs, this elliptical tale of coincidence and necessity unfolds through a series of masterly constructed vignettes, which gradually come together to form a scintillating portrait of the funny, tender, and destructive guises that love between two people can assume and the effect it has on everyone around them. Hailed in Germany as the first great social novel of the twenty-first century, What Was Before is an Elective Affinities for our time.
About the Author
Martin Mosebach is the author of numerous short stories, poems, essays, plays, and novels, including Heresy of Formlessness. Kári Driscoll studied German literature at the University of Oxford and Columbia University.
Table of Contents
Musical Introduction
The Mysterious Tenant
The Girl on the Train
Poolside Objets dArt
A Single White Feather
Bernward and Rosemarie
Brrrazil
The Secret of the Forest Quarter
Branding
Involuntary Excursions into Other Worlds
On the Eve of Great Things
Into the Unknown
The Power of Make-Up
The Eye of the Cockatoo
Struggle, Victory and Resolution
Little Causes—And Effects
A Wasp, a Dress
With Anothers Hands
Business Advice
Time Holds Its Breath
Mayonnaise, Theres Nothing to It
The Keys to Another World
The Services of an Old Typewriter
Two Letter and a Trip to the Cinema
The Old Goddesses
Dining Room Still Life
Thats How Its Done
A Love Nest
xxx
Solitudes
A Harbinger of the Future
A Separation
Will the Patience Come Out?
Hopeful Outlook