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<title><![CDATA[Current Theme:  International Thrillers]]></title>

<description><![CDATA[International thrillers from around the world that are just left of the mainstream.]]></description>

<link><![CDATA[http://www.indiebound.org/user/13522/list/4]]></link>

<language><![CDATA[en-us]]></language>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[I Spit on Your Graves]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780966234602</link>
<description><![CDATA[Fiction. In the tradition of Karl May and Franz Kafka, Boris Vian imagines an America even more amazing than the land he has never visited. I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES is the first novel to put the quotation marks around the hardboiled thriller--a vivid and startling performance (J. Hoberman). The book is Boris Vian's (1920-1959) sex-and-violence-filled homage to American noir. Originally published in France as J'IRAI CRACHER SUR VOS TOMBES--after allegedly being censored in the U.S. and translated into French--the novel was a best seller, establishing Vian as one of the most famous writers of the mid-twentieth century.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[I Spit on Your Graves]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Boris Vian]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Tamtam Books]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780966234602]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Fiction. In the tradition of Karl May and Franz Kafka, Boris Vian imagines an America even more amazing than the land he has never visited. I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES is the first novel to put the quotation marks around the hardboiled thriller--a vivid and startling performance (J. Hoberman). The book is Boris Vian's (1920-1959) sex-and-violence-filled homage to American noir. Originally published in France as J'IRAI CRACHER SUR VOS TOMBES--after allegedly being censored in the U.S. and translated into French--the novel was a best seller, establishing Vian as one of the most famous writers of the mid-twentieth century.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>1998-01-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[My Life in CIA]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781564783929</link>
<description><![CDATA[Through a series of improbable coincidences, in the early 1970s Harry Mathews, then living in France, was commonly reputed to be a CIA agent. Even his closest friends had their suspicions, which were only reinforced each time he tried to deny such a connection. With growing frustrations at his inability to make anyone believe him, Mathews decided to act the part. My Life in CIA documents Mathews's experiences as a would-be spy during 1973, where amid charged word events--the coup in Chile, Watergate, the ending of the Vietnam War--he found himself engaged in a game that took sinister twists as various foreign agencies decided to make sure of him for their own dubious purposes. Harry Mathews has turned these strange events into a spellbinding thriller where the line between fact and fiction gets relentlessly blurred.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[My Life in CIA]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Harry Mathews]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Dalkey Archive Press]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781564783929]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Through a series of improbable coincidences, in the early 1970s Harry Mathews, then living in France, was commonly reputed to be a CIA agent. Even his closest friends had their suspicions, which were only reinforced each time he tried to deny such a connection. With growing frustrations at his inability to make anyone believe him, Mathews decided to act the part. My Life in CIA documents Mathews's experiences as a would-be spy during 1973, where amid charged word events--the coup in Chile, Watergate, the ending of the Vietnam War--he found himself engaged in a game that took sinister twists as various foreign agencies decided to make sure of him for their own dubious purposes. Harry Mathews has turned these strange events into a spellbinding thriller where the line between fact and fiction gets relentlessly blurred.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2005-05-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[A Coffin for Dimitrios]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780375726712</link>
<description><![CDATA[A chance encounter with a Turkish colonel with a penchant for British crime novels leads mystery writer Charles Latimer into a world of sinister political and criminal maneuvers throughout the Balkans in the years between the world wars. Hoping that the career of the notorious Dimitrios, whose body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue, will inspire a plot for his next novel, Latimer soon finds himself caught up in a shadowy web of assassination, espionage, drugs, and treachery.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A Coffin for Dimitrios]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Eric Ambler]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Vintage]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780375726712]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[A chance encounter with a Turkish colonel with a penchant for British crime novels leads mystery writer Charles Latimer into a world of sinister political and criminal maneuvers throughout the Balkans in the years between the world wars. Hoping that the career of the notorious Dimitrios, whose body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue, will inspire a plot for his next novel, Latimer soon finds himself caught up in a shadowy web of assassination, espionage, drugs, and treachery.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2001-10-09T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Ides of March]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781933372990</link>
<description><![CDATA[From the pen of the international bestselling author of "The Last Legion" comes a new political thriller set during the tempestuous final days of Julius Caesar's Imperial Rome.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Ides of March]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Valerio Massimo Manfredi; Christine Feddersen-Manfredi]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Europa Editions]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781933372990]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[From the pen of the international bestselling author of "The Last Legion" comes a new political thriller set during the tempestuous final days of Julius Caesar's Imperial Rome.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-02-23T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Red April]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780307388384</link>
<description><![CDATA[A chilling political thriller set at the end of Peru's grim war between Shining Path terrorists and a morally bankrupt government counterinsurgency. Associate District Prosecutor Felix Chacaltana Saldivar is a by-the-book prosecutor wading through life. Two of his greatest pleasures are writing mundane reports and speaking to his long-dead mother. Everything changes, however, when he is asked to investigate a bizarre and brutal murder: the body was found burnt beyond recognition and a cross branded into its forehead. Adhering to standard operating procedures, Chacaltana begins a meticulous investigation, but when everyone he speaks to meets with an unfortunate and untimely end, he realizes that his quarry may be much closer to home. With action rising in chorus to Peru’s Holy Week, Red April twists and turns racing toward a riveting conclusion. ]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Red April]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Santiago Roncagliolo; Edith Grossman]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Vintage]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780307388384]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[A chilling political thriller set at the end of Peru's grim war between Shining Path terrorists and a morally bankrupt government counterinsurgency. Associate District Prosecutor Felix Chacaltana Saldivar is a by-the-book prosecutor wading through life. Two of his greatest pleasures are writing mundane reports and speaking to his long-dead mother. Everything changes, however, when he is asked to investigate a bizarre and brutal murder: the body was found burnt beyond recognition and a cross branded into its forehead. Adhering to standard operating procedures, Chacaltana begins a meticulous investigation, but when everyone he speaks to meets with an unfortunate and untimely end, he realizes that his quarry may be much closer to home. With action rising in chorus to Peru’s Holy Week, Red April twists and turns racing toward a riveting conclusion. ]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:relation><![CDATA[9780307378316]]></dc:relation>
<dc:date>2010-08-10T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Zugzwang]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781596912540</link>
<description><![CDATA[“Beautifully told…a compelling portrait of a highly civilized society as it approached one of history's great upheavals. [Shows us that] there are moments when the tides of history will not be denied.”—Washington PostZugzwang—A chess term used to describe a position in which a player is reduced to utter helplessless: he is obliged to move, but every move serves to make his position even worse.Ronan Bennett’s new masterpiece of literary suspense unfolds in a city on the verge of revolution. On a blustery April day, a respected St. Petersburg newspaper editor is murdered in front of a shocked crowd. Five days later, Dr. Otto Spethmann, the celebrated psychoanalyst, receives a visit from the police. There has been another murder in the city—and somehow he is implicated. The doctor is mystified and deeply worried, as much for his young, spirited daughter as for himself.  Meanwhile, he finds himself preoccupied by two new patients: Anna Petrovna, a society beauty plagued with nightmares with whom he is inappropriately falling in love, and the troubled genius Rozental, a brilliant but fragile chess master on the verge of a complete breakdown. As Dr. Spethmann is drawn deeper into the murderous intrigue, he finds that he, his patients, and his daughter may all be pawns in a game larger in scope than anything he could have imagined. Punctuated with board-by-board illustrations of a chess match that plays out through the book, Zugzwang is a masterfully written novel packed with cliffhangers, romance, unforgettable characters, and a plot that keeps readers guessing to the very end. ]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Zugzwang]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronan Bennett]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Bloomsbury USA]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781596912540]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[“Beautifully told…a compelling portrait of a highly civilized society as it approached one of history's great upheavals. [Shows us that] there are moments when the tides of history will not be denied.”—Washington PostZugzwang—A chess term used to describe a position in which a player is reduced to utter helplessless: he is obliged to move, but every move serves to make his position even worse.Ronan Bennett’s new masterpiece of literary suspense unfolds in a city on the verge of revolution. On a blustery April day, a respected St. Petersburg newspaper editor is murdered in front of a shocked crowd. Five days later, Dr. Otto Spethmann, the celebrated psychoanalyst, receives a visit from the police. There has been another murder in the city—and somehow he is implicated. The doctor is mystified and deeply worried, as much for his young, spirited daughter as for himself.  Meanwhile, he finds himself preoccupied by two new patients: Anna Petrovna, a society beauty plagued with nightmares with whom he is inappropriately falling in love, and the troubled genius Rozental, a brilliant but fragile chess master on the verge of a complete breakdown. As Dr. Spethmann is drawn deeper into the murderous intrigue, he finds that he, his patients, and his daughter may all be pawns in a game larger in scope than anything he could have imagined. Punctuated with board-by-board illustrations of a chess match that plays out through the book, Zugzwang is a masterfully written novel packed with cliffhangers, romance, unforgettable characters, and a plot that keeps readers guessing to the very end. ]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2008-09-16T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[A Death in Vienna]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780812977639</link>
<description><![CDATA[In 1902, elegant Vienna is the city of the new century, the center of discoveries in everything from the writing of music to the workings of the human mind. But now a brutal homicide has stunned its citizens and appears to have bridged the gap between science and the supernatural. Two very different sleuths from opposite ends of the spectrum will need to combine their talents to solve the boggling crime: Detective Oskar Rheinhardt, who is on the cutting edge of modern police work, and his friend Dr. Max Liebermann, a follower of Sigmund Freud and a pioneer on new frontiers of psychology. As a team they must use both hard evidence and intuitive analysis to solve a medium’s mysterious murder–one that couldn’t have been committed by anyone alive.__________________________________________________________THE MORTALIS DOSSIER- PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS: THE CURIOUS CASE OF PROFESSOR SIGMUND F. AND DETECTIVE FICTIONSummertime–the Austrian Alps: A middle-aged doctor, wishingto forget medicine, turns off the beaten track and begins a strenuousclimb. When he reaches the summit, he sits and contemplates the distantprospect. Suddenly he hears a voice.“Are you a doctor?”He is not alone. At first, he can’t believe that he’s being addressed.He turns and sees a sulky-looking eighteen-year-old. He recognizesher (she served him his meal the previous evening). “Yes,” he replies.“I’m a doctor. How did you know that?”She tells him that her nerves are bad, that she needs help.S ometimes she feels like she can’t breathe, and there’s a hammering inher head. And sometimes something very disturbing happens. She seesthings–including a face that fills her with horror. . . .Well, do you want to know what happens next? I’d be surprised ifyou didn’t.We have here all the ingredients of an engaging thriller: an isolatedsetting, a strange meeting, and a disconcerting confession.So where does this particular opening scene come from? A littleknownwork by one of the queens of crime fiction? A lost reel of anearly Hitchcock film, perhaps? Neither. It is in fact a faithful summaryof the first few pages of Katharina by Sigmund Freud, also known ascase study number four in his Studies on Hysteria, co-authored with JosefBreuer and published in 1895.It is generally agreed that the detective thriller is a nineteenthcenturyinvention, perfected by the holy trinity of Collins, Poe, and(most importantly) Conan Doyle; however, the genre would havebeen quite different had it not been for the oblique influence of psychoanalysis.The psychological thriller often pays close attention topersonal history–childhood experiences, relationships, and significantlife events–in fact, the very same things that any self-respectingtherapist would want to know about. These days it’s almost impossibleto think of the term “thriller” without mentally inserting the prefix“psychological.”So how did this happen? How did Freud’s work come to influencethe development of an entire literary genre? The answer is quite simple.He had some help–and that help came from the American filmindustry.Now it has to be said that Freud didn’t like America. After visitingAmerica, he wrote: “I am very glad I am away from it, and even morethat I don’t have to live there.” He believed that American food hadgiven him a gastrointestinal illness, and that his short stay in Americahad caused his handwriting to deteriorate. His anti-American sentimentsfinally culminated with his famous remark that he consideredAmerica to be “a gigantic mistake.”Be that as it may, although Freud didn’t like America, Americaliked Freud. In fact, America loved him. And nowhere in America wasFreud more loved than in Hollywood.The special relationship between the film industry and psychoanalysisbegan in the 1930s, when many émigré analysts–fleeingfrom the Nazis–settled on the West Coast. Entering analysis becamevery fashionable among the studio elite, and Hollywood soonacquired the sobriquet “couch canyon.” Dr. Ralph Greenson, forexample–a well-known Hollywood analyst–had a patient list thatincluded the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis,and Vivien Leigh. And among the many Hollywood directors whosuccumbed to Freud’s influence was Alfred Hitchcock, whose thrillerswere much more psychological than any that had been filmed before.In one of his films Freud actually makes an appearance–well, more orless. I am thinking here of Spellbound, released in 1945, and based onFrancis Beedings’s crime novel The House of Dr. Edwardes.T he producer of Spellbound, David O. Selznick, was himself inpsychoanalysis–as were most of his family–and so enthusiastic washe about Freud’s ideas that he recruited his own analyst to help himvet the script. Hitchcock’s film has everything we expect from a psychologicalthriller: a clinical setting, a murder, a man who has lost hismemory, a dream sequence, and a sinewy plot that twists and turnstoward a dramatic climax. That this film owes a large debt to psychoanalysisis made absolutely clear when a character appears who is–inall but name–Sigmund Freud: a wise old doctor with a beard, glasses,and a fantastically hammy Viennese accent.Since Hitchcock’s time, authors and screenwriters have had muchfun playing with the resonances that exist between psychoanalysis anddetection. This kind of writing reached its apotheosis in 1975 with thepublication of Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a novel inwhich Freud and Sherlock Holmes are brought together to solve thesame case.The relationship between psychoanalysis and detection was notlost on Freud. In his Introductory Lectures, for example, there is a passagein which he stresses how both the detective and the psychoanalyst dependon accumulating piecemeal evidence that usually arrives in theform of small and apparently inconsequential clues.If you were a detective engaged in tracing a murder, would you expect to find that the murderer had left his photograph behind at the place of the crime, with his address attached? Or would you not necessarily have to be satisfied with comparatively slight and obscure traces of the person you were in search of? So do not let us underestimate small indications; by their help we may succeed in getting on the track of somethingbigger.Later in the same series of lectures, Freud blurs the boundary betweenpsychoanalysis and detection even further. He goes beyond pointingout that psychoanalysis and detection are similar enterprises and suggeststhat psychoanalytic techniques might actually be used to aid detection.Freud describes the case of a real murderer who acquired highlydangerous pathogenic organisms from scientific institutes by pretendingto be a bacteriologist. The murderer then used these stolen culturesto fatally infect his victims. On one occasion, he audaciously wrote aletter to the director of one of these scientific institutes, complainingthat the cultures he had been given were ineffective. But the lettercontained a Freudian slip–an unconsciously performed blunder.Instead of writing in my experiments on mice or guinea pigs, the murdererwrote in my experiments on men. Freud notes that the institute director–not being conversant with psychoanalysis–was happy to overlooksuch a telling error.In a little-known paper called Psychoanalysis and the Ascertaining ofTruth in Courts of Law, Freud is even more confident that psychoanalytictechniques might be used in the service of detection. He writes:In both [psychoanalysis and law] we are concerned with asecret, with something hidden. . . . In the case of the criminal itis a secret which he knows he hides from you, but in the case ofthe hysteric it is a secret hidden from himself. . . . The task ofthe therapeutist is, however, the same as the task of the judge;he must discover the hidden psychic material. To do this wehave invented various methods of detection, some of whichlawyers are now going to imitate.It is interesting that criminology and forensic science emerged at exactlythe same time as psychoanalysis. In 1893, Professor Hans Gross(also Viennese) published the first handbook of criminal investigation,a manual for detectives. It was the same year that Freud published(with Josef Breuer) his first work on psychoanalysis: a “PreliminaryCommunication,” On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena.Freud, largely via Hollywood, wielded an extraordinary influenceon detective fiction. But to what extent is the reverse true?We know that Freud was very widely read–and that he hadand Vivien Leigh. And among the many Hollywood directors whosuccumbed to Freud’s influence was Alfred Hitchcock, whose thrillerswere much more psychological than any that had been filmed before.In one of his films Freud actually makes an appearance–well, more orless. I am thinking here of Spellbound, released in 1945, and based onFrancis Beedings’s crime novel The House of Dr. Edwardes.The producer of Spellbound, David O. Selznick, was himself inpsychoanalysis–as were most of his family–and so enthusiastic washe about Freud’s ideas that he recruited his own analyst to help himvet the script. Hitchcock’s film has everything we expect from a psychologicalthriller: a clinical setting, a murder, a man who has lost hismemory, a dream sequence, and a sinewy plot that twists and turnstoward a dramatic climax. That this film owes a large debt to psychoanalysisis made absolutely clear when a character appears who is–inall but name–Sigmund Freud: a wise old doctor with a beard, glasses,and a fantastically hammy Viennese accent.Since Hitchcock’s time, authors and screenwriters have had muchfun playing with the resonances that exist between psychoanalysis anddetection. This kind of writing reached its apotheosis in 1975 with thepublication of Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a novel inwhich Freud and Sherlock Holmes are brought together to solve thesame case.The relationship between psychoanalysis and detection was notlost on Freud. In his Introductory Lectures, for example, there is a passagein which he stresses how both the detective and the psychoanalyst dependon accumulating piecemeal evidence that usually arrives in theform of small and apparently inconsequential clues.If you were a detective engaged in tracing a murder, wouldyou expect to find that the murderer had left his photographbehind at the place of the crime, with his address attached? Orwould you not necessarily have to be satisfied with comparativelyslight and obscure traces of the person you were insearch of? So do not let us underestimate small indications; bytheir help we may succeed in getting on the track of somethingbigger.Later in the same series of lectures, Freud blurs the boundary betweenpsychoanalysis and detection even further. He goes beyond pointingout that psychoanalysis and detection are similar enterprises and suggeststhat psychoanalytic techniques might actually be used to aid detection.Freud describes the case of a real murderer who acquired highlydangerous pathogenic organisms from scientific institutes by pretendingto be a bacteriologist. The murderer then used these stolen culturesto fatally infect his victims. On one occasion, he audaciously wrote aletter to the director of one of these scientific institutes, complainingthat the cultures he had been given were ineffective. But the lettercontained a Freudian slip–an unconsciously performed blunder.Instead of writing in my experiments on mice or guinea pigs, the murdererwrote in my experiments on men. Freud notes that the institute director–not being conversant with psychoanalysis– was happy to overlooksuch a telling error.In a little-known paper called Psychoanalysis and the Ascertaining ofTruth in Courts of Law, Freud is even more confident that psychoanalytictechniques might be used in the service of detection. He writes:In both [psychoanalysis and law] we are concerned with asecret, with something hidden. . . . In the case of the criminal itis a secret which he knows he hides from you, but in the case ofthe hysteric it is a secret hidden from himself. . . . The task ofthe therapeutist is, however, the same as the task of the judge;he must discover the hidden psychic material. To do this wehave invented various methods of detection, some of whichlawyers are now going to imitate.It is interesting that criminology and forensic science emerged at exactlythe same time as psychoanalysis. In 1893, Professor Hans Gross(also Viennese) published the first handbook of criminal investigation,a manual for detectives. It was the same year that Freud published(with Josef Breuer) his first work on psychoanalysis: a “PreliminaryCommunication,” On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena.Freud, largely via Hollywood, wielded an extraordinary influenceon detective fiction. But to what extent is the reverse true?We know that Freud was very widely read–and that he hadlished a memoir in 1971, which contains a very interesting aside. Thetwo men had been discussing literature, and Freud had expressed hisadmiration for several writers, most of them acknowledged mastersand writers of the first magnitude, such as Dostoevsky. However, bythe Wolfman’s reckoning at least, a lesser talent seemed to have gatecrashedFreud’s literary pantheon.Once we happened to speak of Conan Doyle and his creation,Sherlock Holmes. I had thought that Freud would haveno use for this type of light reading matter, and was surprised tofind that this was not at all the case and that Freud had readthis author attentively. The fact that circumstantial evidenceis useful in psychoanalysis when reconstructing a childhoodhistory may explain Freud’s interest in this type of literature.The Wolfman’s final observation is clearly correct. Crimes are likesymptoms, and the psychoanalyst and detective are similar creatures.Both scrutinize circumstantial evidence, both reconstruct histories,and both seek to establish an ultimate cause.If we broaden our definition of what might legitimately be calleddetective fiction and permit ourselves to consider works written evenbefore Hoffmann’ s Mademoiselle de Scudéry, then we encounter a storythat, without doubt, exerted a profound influence on Freud and thedevelopment of psychoanalysis. It is a story that British writer ChristopherBooker has called the greatest “whodunit” in all literature. It isone of the earliest stories of murder and detection ever recorded andhas a twist in the tale that still has the power to shock: Oedipus Rex bySophocles.When we meet Oedipus, there is a curse on his country. He is toldthat this curse will not be lifted until he has discovered the identity ofthe man who murdered his predecessor: King Laius, the former husband of Oedipus’s new wife, Jocasta. Oedipus follows clue after clue until his investigation leads him inexorably to a terrible conclusion.It was he, Oedipus, who killed the king. Laius was his father andOedipus is now married to his own mother.This classic tragedy is also an ancient detective story and gave itsname to the cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory–the much mooted(and even more misunderstood) Oedipus complex–a group of largelyunconscious ideas and feelings concerning wishes to possess the parentof the opposite sex and eliminate the parent of the same sex.I think there is something very satisfying about the relationshipbetween psychoanalysis and detective fiction. Freud influenced thecourse of detective fiction, but by the same token, detective fiction (inits broadest possible sense) also influenced Freud. And at a deeperlevel, psychoanalysis–a process that resembles detective work–discovers a “whodunit” buried in the depths of every human psyche.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A Death in Vienna]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frank Tallis]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Random House Trade Paperbacks]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780812977639]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[In 1902, elegant Vienna is the city of the new century, the center of discoveries in everything from the writing of music to the workings of the human mind. But now a brutal homicide has stunned its citizens and appears to have bridged the gap between science and the supernatural. Two very different sleuths from opposite ends of the spectrum will need to combine their talents to solve the boggling crime: Detective Oskar Rheinhardt, who is on the cutting edge of modern police work, and his friend Dr. Max Liebermann, a follower of Sigmund Freud and a pioneer on new frontiers of psychology. As a team they must use both hard evidence and intuitive analysis to solve a medium’s mysterious murder–one that couldn’t have been committed by anyone alive.__________________________________________________________THE MORTALIS DOSSIER- PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS: THE CURIOUS CASE OF PROFESSOR SIGMUND F. AND DETECTIVE FICTIONSummertime–the Austrian Alps: A middle-aged doctor, wishingto forget medicine, turns off the beaten track and begins a strenuousclimb. When he reaches the summit, he sits and contemplates the distantprospect. Suddenly he hears a voice.“Are you a doctor?”He is not alone. At first, he can’t believe that he’s being addressed.He turns and sees a sulky-looking eighteen-year-old. He recognizesher (she served him his meal the previous evening). “Yes,” he replies.“I’m a doctor. How did you know that?”She tells him that her nerves are bad, that she needs help.S ometimes she feels like she can’t breathe, and there’s a hammering inher head. And sometimes something very disturbing happens. She seesthings–including a face that fills her with horror. . . .Well, do you want to know what happens next? I’d be surprised ifyou didn’t.We have here all the ingredients of an engaging thriller: an isolatedsetting, a strange meeting, and a disconcerting confession.So where does this particular opening scene come from? A littleknownwork by one of the queens of crime fiction? A lost reel of anearly Hitchcock film, perhaps? Neither. It is in fact a faithful summaryof the first few pages of Katharina by Sigmund Freud, also known ascase study number four in his Studies on Hysteria, co-authored with JosefBreuer and published in 1895.It is generally agreed that the detective thriller is a nineteenthcenturyinvention, perfected by the holy trinity of Collins, Poe, and(most importantly) Conan Doyle; however, the genre would havebeen quite different had it not been for the oblique influence of psychoanalysis.The psychological thriller often pays close attention topersonal history–childhood experiences, relationships, and significantlife events–in fact, the very same things that any self-respectingtherapist would want to know about. These days it’s almost impossibleto think of the term “thriller” without mentally inserting the prefix“psychological.”So how did this happen? How did Freud’s work come to influencethe development of an entire literary genre? The answer is quite simple.He had some help–and that help came from the American filmindustry.Now it has to be said that Freud didn’t like America. After visitingAmerica, he wrote: “I am very glad I am away from it, and even morethat I don’t have to live there.” He believed that American food hadgiven him a gastrointestinal illness, and that his short stay in Americahad caused his handwriting to deteriorate. His anti-American sentimentsfinally culminated with his famous remark that he consideredAmerica to be “a gigantic mistake.”Be that as it may, although Freud didn’t like America, Americaliked Freud. In fact, America loved him. And nowhere in America wasFreud more loved than in Hollywood.The special relationship between the film industry and psychoanalysisbegan in the 1930s, when many émigré analysts–fleeingfrom the Nazis–settled on the West Coast. Entering analysis becamevery fashionable among the studio elite, and Hollywood soonacquired the sobriquet “couch canyon.” Dr. Ralph Greenson, forexample–a well-known Hollywood analyst–had a patient list thatincluded the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis,and Vivien Leigh. And among the many Hollywood directors whosuccumbed to Freud’s influence was Alfred Hitchcock, whose thrillerswere much more psychological than any that had been filmed before.In one of his films Freud actually makes an appearance–well, more orless. I am thinking here of Spellbound, released in 1945, and based onFrancis Beedings’s crime novel The House of Dr. Edwardes.T he producer of Spellbound, David O. Selznick, was himself inpsychoanalysis–as were most of his family–and so enthusiastic washe about Freud’s ideas that he recruited his own analyst to help himvet the script. Hitchcock’s film has everything we expect from a psychologicalthriller: a clinical setting, a murder, a man who has lost hismemory, a dream sequence, and a sinewy plot that twists and turnstoward a dramatic climax. That this film owes a large debt to psychoanalysisis made absolutely clear when a character appears who is–inall but name–Sigmund Freud: a wise old doctor with a beard, glasses,and a fantastically hammy Viennese accent.Since Hitchcock’s time, authors and screenwriters have had muchfun playing with the resonances that exist between psychoanalysis anddetection. This kind of writing reached its apotheosis in 1975 with thepublication of Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a novel inwhich Freud and Sherlock Holmes are brought together to solve thesame case.The relationship between psychoanalysis and detection was notlost on Freud. In his Introductory Lectures, for example, there is a passagein which he stresses how both the detective and the psychoanalyst dependon accumulating piecemeal evidence that usually arrives in theform of small and apparently inconsequential clues.If you were a detective engaged in tracing a murder, would you expect to find that the murderer had left his photograph behind at the place of the crime, with his address attached? Or would you not necessarily have to be satisfied with comparatively slight and obscure traces of the person you were in search of? So do not let us underestimate small indications; by their help we may succeed in getting on the track of somethingbigger.Later in the same series of lectures, Freud blurs the boundary betweenpsychoanalysis and detection even further. He goes beyond pointingout that psychoanalysis and detection are similar enterprises and suggeststhat psychoanalytic techniques might actually be used to aid detection.Freud describes the case of a real murderer who acquired highlydangerous pathogenic organisms from scientific institutes by pretendingto be a bacteriologist. The murderer then used these stolen culturesto fatally infect his victims. On one occasion, he audaciously wrote aletter to the director of one of these scientific institutes, complainingthat the cultures he had been given were ineffective. But the lettercontained a Freudian slip–an unconsciously performed blunder.Instead of writing in my experiments on mice or guinea pigs, the murdererwrote in my experiments on men. Freud notes that the institute director–not being conversant with psychoanalysis–was happy to overlooksuch a telling error.In a little-known paper called Psychoanalysis and the Ascertaining ofTruth in Courts of Law, Freud is even more confident that psychoanalytictechniques might be used in the service of detection. He writes:In both [psychoanalysis and law] we are concerned with asecret, with something hidden. . . . In the case of the criminal itis a secret which he knows he hides from you, but in the case ofthe hysteric it is a secret hidden from himself. . . . The task ofthe therapeutist is, however, the same as the task of the judge;he must discover the hidden psychic material. To do this wehave invented various methods of detection, some of whichlawyers are now going to imitate.It is interesting that criminology and forensic science emerged at exactlythe same time as psychoanalysis. In 1893, Professor Hans Gross(also Viennese) published the first handbook of criminal investigation,a manual for detectives. It was the same year that Freud published(with Josef Breuer) his first work on psychoanalysis: a “PreliminaryCommunication,” On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena.Freud, largely via Hollywood, wielded an extraordinary influenceon detective fiction. But to what extent is the reverse true?We know that Freud was very widely read–and that he hadand Vivien Leigh. And among the many Hollywood directors whosuccumbed to Freud’s influence was Alfred Hitchcock, whose thrillerswere much more psychological than any that had been filmed before.In one of his films Freud actually makes an appearance–well, more orless. I am thinking here of Spellbound, released in 1945, and based onFrancis Beedings’s crime novel The House of Dr. Edwardes.The producer of Spellbound, David O. Selznick, was himself inpsychoanalysis–as were most of his family–and so enthusiastic washe about Freud’s ideas that he recruited his own analyst to help himvet the script. Hitchcock’s film has everything we expect from a psychologicalthriller: a clinical setting, a murder, a man who has lost hismemory, a dream sequence, and a sinewy plot that twists and turnstoward a dramatic climax. That this film owes a large debt to psychoanalysisis made absolutely clear when a character appears who is–inall but name–Sigmund Freud: a wise old doctor with a beard, glasses,and a fantastically hammy Viennese accent.Since Hitchcock’s time, authors and screenwriters have had muchfun playing with the resonances that exist between psychoanalysis anddetection. This kind of writing reached its apotheosis in 1975 with thepublication of Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a novel inwhich Freud and Sherlock Holmes are brought together to solve thesame case.The relationship between psychoanalysis and detection was notlost on Freud. In his Introductory Lectures, for example, there is a passagein which he stresses how both the detective and the psychoanalyst dependon accumulating piecemeal evidence that usually arrives in theform of small and apparently inconsequential clues.If you were a detective engaged in tracing a murder, wouldyou expect to find that the murderer had left his photographbehind at the place of the crime, with his address attached? Orwould you not necessarily have to be satisfied with comparativelyslight and obscure traces of the person you were insearch of? So do not let us underestimate small indications; bytheir help we may succeed in getting on the track of somethingbigger.Later in the same series of lectures, Freud blurs the boundary betweenpsychoanalysis and detection even further. He goes beyond pointingout that psychoanalysis and detection are similar enterprises and suggeststhat psychoanalytic techniques might actually be used to aid detection.Freud describes the case of a real murderer who acquired highlydangerous pathogenic organisms from scientific institutes by pretendingto be a bacteriologist. The murderer then used these stolen culturesto fatally infect his victims. On one occasion, he audaciously wrote aletter to the director of one of these scientific institutes, complainingthat the cultures he had been given were ineffective. But the lettercontained a Freudian slip–an unconsciously performed blunder.Instead of writing in my experiments on mice or guinea pigs, the murdererwrote in my experiments on men. Freud notes that the institute director–not being conversant with psychoanalysis– was happy to overlooksuch a telling error.In a little-known paper called Psychoanalysis and the Ascertaining ofTruth in Courts of Law, Freud is even more confident that psychoanalytictechniques might be used in the service of detection. He writes:In both [psychoanalysis and law] we are concerned with asecret, with something hidden. . . . In the case of the criminal itis a secret which he knows he hides from you, but in the case ofthe hysteric it is a secret hidden from himself. . . . The task ofthe therapeutist is, however, the same as the task of the judge;he must discover the hidden psychic material. To do this wehave invented various methods of detection, some of whichlawyers are now going to imitate.It is interesting that criminology and forensic science emerged at exactlythe same time as psychoanalysis. In 1893, Professor Hans Gross(also Viennese) published the first handbook of criminal investigation,a manual for detectives. It was the same year that Freud published(with Josef Breuer) his first work on psychoanalysis: a “PreliminaryCommunication,” On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena.Freud, largely via Hollywood, wielded an extraordinary influenceon detective fiction. But to what extent is the reverse true?We know that Freud was very widely read–and that he hadlished a memoir in 1971, which contains a very interesting aside. Thetwo men had been discussing literature, and Freud had expressed hisadmiration for several writers, most of them acknowledged mastersand writers of the first magnitude, such as Dostoevsky. However, bythe Wolfman’s reckoning at least, a lesser talent seemed to have gatecrashedFreud’s literary pantheon.Once we happened to speak of Conan Doyle and his creation,Sherlock Holmes. I had thought that Freud would haveno use for this type of light reading matter, and was surprised tofind that this was not at all the case and that Freud had readthis author attentively. The fact that circumstantial evidenceis useful in psychoanalysis when reconstructing a childhoodhistory may explain Freud’s interest in this type of literature.The Wolfman’s final observation is clearly correct. Crimes are likesymptoms, and the psychoanalyst and detective are similar creatures.Both scrutinize circumstantial evidence, both reconstruct histories,and both seek to establish an ultimate cause.If we broaden our definition of what might legitimately be calleddetective fiction and permit ourselves to consider works written evenbefore Hoffmann’ s Mademoiselle de Scudéry, then we encounter a storythat, without doubt, exerted a profound influence on Freud and thedevelopment of psychoanalysis. It is a story that British writer ChristopherBooker has called the greatest “whodunit” in all literature. It isone of the earliest stories of murder and detection ever recorded andhas a twist in the tale that still has the power to shock: Oedipus Rex bySophocles.When we meet Oedipus, there is a curse on his country. He is toldthat this curse will not be lifted until he has discovered the identity ofthe man who murdered his predecessor: King Laius, the former husband of Oedipus’s new wife, Jocasta. Oedipus follows clue after clue until his investigation leads him inexorably to a terrible conclusion.It was he, Oedipus, who killed the king. Laius was his father andOedipus is now married to his own mother.This classic tragedy is also an ancient detective story and gave itsname to the cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory–the much mooted(and even more misunderstood) Oedipus complex–a group of largelyunconscious ideas and feelings concerning wishes to possess the parentof the opposite sex and eliminate the parent of the same sex.I think there is something very satisfying about the relationshipbetween psychoanalysis and detective fiction. Freud influenced thecourse of detective fiction, but by the same token, detective fiction (inits broadest possible sense) also influenced Freud. And at a deeperlevel, psychoanalysis–a process that resembles detective work–discovers a “whodunit” buried in the depths of every human psyche.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2007-05-08T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[In Matto's Realm]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781904738060</link>
<description><![CDATA[The second Studer mystery. Set in an insane asylum, the director murdered. A European classic.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[In Matto's Realm]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Friedrich Glauser; Mike Mitchell]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Bitter Lemon Press]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781904738060]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[The second Studer mystery. Set in an insane asylum, the director murdered. A European classic.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:relation><![CDATA[9781904738466]]></dc:relation>
<dc:date>2006-01-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Lie]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781904738428</link>
<description><![CDATA[“...One shares Susanne's belief that she must try to carry the deception off. Whether she will succeed keeps the reader, peering over Susanne's shoulder at all the traps, turning the pages of this remarkable book.”—The Independent (UK) Praise for Petra Hammesfahr's The Sinner: “The Sinner is best psychological suspense novel I have read all year.”—Daily Telegraph “Dubbed Germany’s answer to Patricia Highsmith, Hammesfahr should win new fans with this novel.”Publishers Weekly “Demonstrates why she is one of Germany's bestselling writers of crime and psychological thrillers. It's grim, delves deep into the human psyche, and keeps you gripped.”The Times (London) Nadia and Susanne look uncannily alike, but one of the women is seriously rich and the other is destitute. When Nadia asks Susanne to spend the weekend with her husband so that she can sneak off with a lover, how can Susanne refuse the outrageous payment on offer? Nadia and her husband barely speak to each other and he will be working most of the weekend. Easy money, or so it seems. One Friday afternoon Susanne drives Nadia’s Alfa to her beautiful suburban villa with its indoor pool and glass doors opening onto the sloping lawn. This first stay is followed by others, as an apparently harmless game becomes a deadly web of lies. Petra Hammesfahr, born in 1951, has not had an easy life: she left school at thirteen and became pregnant by an alcoholic husband at seventeen. She published her first novel when she was forty and has since written over twenty crime and suspense novels. Petra also writes scripts for television and film. She has won numerous literary prizes, including the Crime Prize of Wiesbaden and the Rhineland Literary Prize.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Lie]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Petra Hammesfahr; Mike Mitchell]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Bitter Lemon Press]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781904738428]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[“...One shares Susanne's belief that she must try to carry the deception off. Whether she will succeed keeps the reader, peering over Susanne's shoulder at all the traps, turning the pages of this remarkable book.”—The Independent (UK) Praise for Petra Hammesfahr's The Sinner: “The Sinner is best psychological suspense novel I have read all year.”—Daily Telegraph “Dubbed Germany’s answer to Patricia Highsmith, Hammesfahr should win new fans with this novel.”Publishers Weekly “Demonstrates why she is one of Germany's bestselling writers of crime and psychological thrillers. It's grim, delves deep into the human psyche, and keeps you gripped.”The Times (London) Nadia and Susanne look uncannily alike, but one of the women is seriously rich and the other is destitute. When Nadia asks Susanne to spend the weekend with her husband so that she can sneak off with a lover, how can Susanne refuse the outrageous payment on offer? Nadia and her husband barely speak to each other and he will be working most of the weekend. Easy money, or so it seems. One Friday afternoon Susanne drives Nadia’s Alfa to her beautiful suburban villa with its indoor pool and glass doors opening onto the sloping lawn. This first stay is followed by others, as an apparently harmless game becomes a deadly web of lies. Petra Hammesfahr, born in 1951, has not had an easy life: she left school at thirteen and became pregnant by an alcoholic husband at seventeen. She published her first novel when she was forty and has since written over twenty crime and suspense novels. Petra also writes scripts for television and film. She has won numerous literary prizes, including the Crime Prize of Wiesbaden and the Rhineland Literary Prize.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:relation><![CDATA[9781904738602]]></dc:relation>
<dc:date>2010-04-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Crime and Punishment]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780553898088</link>
<description><![CDATA[Determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammelled individual will, Raskolnikov, and impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the Tsars, commits an act of murder and theft and sets into motion a story which, for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its profundity of characterization and vision, is almost unequaled in the literatures of the world. The best known of Dostoevsky's masterpieces, Crime And Punishment can bear any amount of rereading without losing a drop of its power over our imagination.
]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Crime and Punishment]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Fyodor Dostoevsky; Constance Garnett; Joseph Frank]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Random House Publishing Group]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780553898088]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammelled individual will, Raskolnikov, and impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the Tsars, commits an act of murder and theft and sets into motion a story which, for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its profundity of characterization and vision, is almost unequaled in the literatures of the world. The best known of Dostoevsky's masterpieces, Crime And Punishment can bear any amount of rereading without losing a drop of its power over our imagination.
]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[eBook]]></dc:format>
<dc:relation><![CDATA[1]]></dc:relation>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Woman in White]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780141439617</link>
<description><![CDATA[Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Matthew Sweet.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Woman in White]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Wilkie  Collins; Matthew  Sweet]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Penguin Classics]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780141439617]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Matthew Sweet.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:relation><![CDATA[9780553904666]]></dc:relation>
<dc:date>2003-04-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Box 21]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780374282950</link>
<description><![CDATA[The International Thriller that Stockholm City hailed as the Best Crime Novel of the Year has finally crossed the Atlantic! Three years ago, Lydia and Alena were two hopeful girls from Lithuania. Now they are sex slaves, lured to Sweden with the promise of better jobs and then trapped in a Stockholm brothel, forced to repay their “debt.” Suddenly they are given an unexpected chance at freedom, and with it the opportunity to take revenge on their enslavers and reclaim the lives and dignity they once had. What will happen now that the tables are turned and the victims fight back? In this masterful thriller, the celebrated team of Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström delve into the seedy underbelly of Stockholm. There we meet Lydia and Alena as they embark on a desperate plan to expose their captor and demand justice; police officers Sundkvist and Grens, on the trail of both Lydia’s enslavers and Jochum Lang, a notorious mob enforcer; and Hilding Oldéus, a junkie on what might be his last—and most destructive—bender. At the Söder Hospital, their destinies begin to converge in unexpected and explosive ways. Box 21 is a Scandinavian thriller of the highest order: a mindblowing psychological drama written with powerful intensity. When it was published in Sweden, Solo called it “suspenseful, gripping, and intelligently written . . . Almost impossible to put down,” while SVT exclaimed: “Forget crime literature; this is, simply put, great literature!”]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Box 21]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Anders Roslund; Borge Hellstrom]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780374282950]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[The International Thriller that Stockholm City hailed as the Best Crime Novel of the Year has finally crossed the Atlantic! Three years ago, Lydia and Alena were two hopeful girls from Lithuania. Now they are sex slaves, lured to Sweden with the promise of better jobs and then trapped in a Stockholm brothel, forced to repay their “debt.” Suddenly they are given an unexpected chance at freedom, and with it the opportunity to take revenge on their enslavers and reclaim the lives and dignity they once had. What will happen now that the tables are turned and the victims fight back? In this masterful thriller, the celebrated team of Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström delve into the seedy underbelly of Stockholm. There we meet Lydia and Alena as they embark on a desperate plan to expose their captor and demand justice; police officers Sundkvist and Grens, on the trail of both Lydia’s enslavers and Jochum Lang, a notorious mob enforcer; and Hilding Oldéus, a junkie on what might be his last—and most destructive—bender. At the Söder Hospital, their destinies begin to converge in unexpected and explosive ways. Box 21 is a Scandinavian thriller of the highest order: a mindblowing psychological drama written with powerful intensity. When it was published in Sweden, Solo called it “suspenseful, gripping, and intelligently written . . . Almost impossible to put down,” while SVT exclaimed: “Forget crime literature; this is, simply put, great literature!”]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-10-13T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Dirty Snow]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781590170434</link>
<description><![CDATA[Nineteen-year-old Frank Friedmaier lives in a country under occupation. Most people struggle to get by; Frank takes it easy in his mother's whorehouse, which caters to members of the occupying forces. But Frank is restless. He is a pimp, a thug, a petty thief, and, as Dirty Snow opens, he has just killed his first man. Through the unrelenting darkness and cold of an endless winter, Frank will pursue abjection until at last there is nowhere to go.Hans Koning has described Dirty Snow as "one of the very few novels to come out of German-occupied France that gets it exactly right." In a study of the criminal mind that is comparable to Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, Simenon maps a no man's land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction—and redemption, perhaps, as well—by forces beyond its control.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dirty Snow]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Georges Simenon; William T. Vollmann; Marc Romano; Louise Varese]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[NYRB Classics]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781590170434]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Nineteen-year-old Frank Friedmaier lives in a country under occupation. Most people struggle to get by; Frank takes it easy in his mother's whorehouse, which caters to members of the occupying forces. But Frank is restless. He is a pimp, a thug, a petty thief, and, as Dirty Snow opens, he has just killed his first man. Through the unrelenting darkness and cold of an endless winter, Frank will pursue abjection until at last there is nowhere to go.Hans Koning has described Dirty Snow as "one of the very few novels to come out of German-occupied France that gets it exactly right." In a study of the criminal mind that is comparable to Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, Simenon maps a no man's land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction—and redemption, perhaps, as well—by forces beyond its control.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2003-08-31T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

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