The Jump Artist by Austin Ratner

The Jump Artist

Austin Ratner

Rich in poetic prose, this is a traumatic fictional account of the early years of the famous photographer Phillippe Halsman. Set in 1928 anti-Semitic Austria, the Latvian Jew is trialled twice for the death of his father. At the end of this novel you too will be compelled to ‘google’ the celebrity ‘jump’ photographs, and marvel at his triumph over adversity.

Extract
The courtroom was growing dimmer and shadow had engulfed the dandified mien of the former emperor. The man from the Friesenbergeralpe road, the goat man, was still out there and no one was even looking for him except for another solitary man in the vastness of the mountains. In fact, it wasn’t the machinery of justice that frightened Phillipp most anymore, but the machinery of time, winding events among its cold coils, cogs, and spindles, winding many things into being all at once and all at once taking them back again, into the interstices of the machine, where everything vanished, never to be seen again or ever to be understood.
Parallels
  • Mendelssohn is on the Roof by Jiri Weil
  • HHhH by Laurent Binet