The Escape by Adam Thirlwell

The Escape

Adam Thirlwell

In a spa hotel in an unnamed country in Northern Europe, 78-year-old Haffner is on a mission. He is attempting to escape from his various love affairs and his family and also to reclaim his ex-wife's property confiscated by the Nazis. This novel is an unusual mixture of very stylish and clever writing interspersed with classical allusions and quotations mixed with some voyeuristic and comical sex scenes. An entertaining and funny read.

Extract
Haffner was lustful, selfish, vain - and entirely commonplace man. It was the unavoidable conclusion. He had to admit it. In London and New York he had practised as a banker. His life had been unremarkable. It was the twentieth century's idea of the bourgeois: the grey Atlantic Ocean. The horizontal fretting waves of the grey Atlantic Ocean. With liberty at one extreme, and the Bank of England at the other. But Haffner wasn't straddling the Atlantic any more. A hotel in a spa town was now Haffner's temporary home. He was landlocked - adrift in the centre of Europe, aloft in the Alps.



And now he was hidden in a wardrobe.
Parallels
  • Everyman by Philip Roth
  • Rabbit Run by John Updike
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Explicit sexual Content