Reinhard Jirgl’s strikingly individual novel The Fire Above, the Mountain Below demonstrates that he is not only unorthodox in his approach to language, but also difficult to pin down in terms of any genre. Weaving together elements of crime story, Cold War espionage, family tragedy, and a dystopian future, he creates a tapestry of fragile humanity and menacing inhumanity. The investigation of a series of gruesome killings takes a detective inspector into explorations of a secret intelligence programme in former East Germany and the role of a family with a tragic history. The more is uncovered, the more disorienting it becomes, and the reader is drawn into a complex web of discovery and suppression.
 

Reinhard Jirgl was born in Berlin in 1953 and is the author of numerous novels that were censored by the GDR but published after the border between East and West Germany opened in 1989. Wieland Hoban’s translations include books by Theodor W. Adorno and Peter Sloterdijk, as well as numerous essays for collections and journals.