The Quiet Twin by Dan Vyleta

The Quiet Twin

Dan Vyleta

An exciting novel set in Vienna in 1939 with Austria part of the German 3rd Reich. All the main characters are residents in the same block of flats from which it is very easy to spy on your neighbours - but also very easy to jump to the wrong conclusions. The atmosphere of fear and suspicion is very well done. A serious read which won't disappoint.

Extract
It was near five when she woke again and hurried sleepy to the window. At first she thought she had missed him: that he had returned and drawn the curtains, shut her out from his world. Then his face emerged, greasepainted, out of the darkness of his window: hung wide-eyed, unmoving, at the very centre of its frame, held up by neither noose nor neck nor block of wood. When she had first seen him, disembodied, it had frightened her and made her take him for a ghost.
Parallels
  • Vienna by Eva Menasse
  • The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
  • Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada