'My father and I head towards a nervous breakdown as he attempts to erase three years of Communist indoctrination in the course of a single evening. I simply cannot comprehend that Lenin, the friend of all children, is now allegedly an arsehole.' When seven-year-old Mischka and her family flee the oppressive USSR for the freedom of Vienna, her world seems to divide neatly in two: there's life as she knew it before, and life as she must relearn it now. But even as she's busy dressing her new Barbie, perfecting her German and gorging on fresh fruit, Mischka is aware that there's part of her that can never escape her homeland, with its terrifying folktales, its insidious anti-Semitism and its old family secrets. As her parents' marriage splinters and her sister retreats into silence, Mischka has to find her own way of living when her head and her heart are in two places at once. There is darkness galore in this novel. But there is also much comedy to be had in its twisted enchanted tales. It is as seductive and unsettling as similar work by Angela Carter or Margaret Atwood, while it shares a geography with Everything Is Illuminated and If I Told You Once.

Charming... A clever, snappy novel suffused with comedy, proverbial wisdom and fairy tale. -- Catherine Taylor * Guardian *
The author, like her subject, left the USSR as a child and vividly evokes the discord between two worlds. -- Jennifer Lipman * Jewish Chronicle *
Vibrant... her darkly humorous use of folk tale and family lore might recall Angela Carter. -- Amy Dawson * Metro *
Very human, sometimes poignant, sometimes wryly amusing psycho-thriller about a family trapped in limbo. -- Peggy Graham * Deutsche Welle *
Splithead has an intriguing narrative structure... Excellent * Journal of Austrian Studies *

Born in St Petersburg in the early 1970s, JULYA RABINOWICH moved to Vienna with her parents in 1977 and has lived there ever since. She is a critically acclaimed playwright and Splithead is her first novel.