The awful blurb almost put me off completely but after reading the first chapters I took a more nonsense view. We begin with Friedrich’s childhood which sounds like the stuff of nightmares, where horrifying incidents are described almost in passing. We end this extract with the decision by the ( possibly psychologically) colourblind young man going off ‘ in the middle of war’ to study art and the ‘gray areas’ in Berlin. One of these ‘ gray areas’ includes the stories about Jews being carted off into the night never to be seen again. The writing seems curiously stilted and I cannot decide if this is meant to be the manner of the young man or whether it is the translation. It does fit in with the rather episodic nature of the narrative so I guess it’s intentional. Quite intriguing, yes I would consider this one but I would like to meet