After a childhood encounter with a hypnotist, the Friedland brothers scatter into adulthood as variations on imposture.

One becomes a priest who does not believe, one an artist trapped inside fakery and ambition, one a financier whose numbers may not add up. Daniel Kehlmann’s F is a sly, formally neat little trap, he keeps it sharp and strange rather than heavy. One might say it's even slightly cursed.

Daniel Kehlmann is one of contemporary German-language fiction’s sharpest operators best known for Measuring the World.  F is very much in that line: clever, controlled, funny in a bleak little European way, and built around fraud, faith and family mythology. Good for readers who like European fiction with clean sentences, moral rot, and a metaphysical little knife slipped between the ribs.

Hardback first American edition, published by Pantheon in 2014. Translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway. Very good condition overall, with light shelf wear to the cover and edges.