THE HOUSE ON MOON LAKE

Reissued to accompany Italian novelist Duranti’s most recent book (see above), this multiple prizewinner (which first appeared in English translation in 1986) constructs an absorbing psychodrama from its faintly rarefied premise: a translator’s surreal experience of the forgotten book and author that he (as it were) resurrects. Impoverished aristocrat Fabrizio Garrone, having successfully restored obscure Austrian author Fritz Oberhofer’s neglected classic The House on Moon Lake to print, writes Oberhofer’s biography as well—“inventing” material that takes on its own life, distracting Fabrizio from the down-to-earth orbit of his mistress Fulvia (a wonderfully sane character) and plunging him into an aesthetic nightmare such as Henry James might have dreamed. Ingenious, absorbing, and capped by a terrific surprise ending.