Out of the Line of Fire Mark Henshaw 1988

Dustjacket synopsis:

"To an Australian writer visiting Heidelberg, the brilliant young philosophy student Wolfi is a compelling character. From the start, the details of Wolfi's life are curious - from his inquisitorial father and passionate mother to the grandmother who pays for his sexual initiation with a prostitute and to his connections with the outlandish rogue Karl.

"As we are lured by Wolfi's obsession into the mysterious and erotic maze of this novel, we find nothing is as it appears.

"What in fact is fact and what in fiction is fiction?"

Quotes:
"A dazzling debut. A tour de force. This book is imaginative, virtuosic, and awesomely assured. It is compulsive reading. One thinks of Walter Abish, Italo Calvino, Peter Handke." - Don Anderson

About the Author:
Mark Henshaw was born in 1951 and has been writing fiction for some time. This, however, is his first published work.

First Paragraph:

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. These are the words Italo Calvino selected to open his novel If on a winter's night a traveler. Astonishingly he sets them out in the same order. Had Walter Abish chosen the same words he might have begun, after, of course, placing them in alphabetical order: You, Italo Calvino, are a winter's night traveler about to being reading a new novel If. But as yet he has not, and until he does we will have to wait.

In fact Calvino begins his novel: 'Stai per cominciare a leggere il nuovo romanzo Se una notte d'inverno un viggiatore di Italo Calvino.' Thus the original avoids a peculiar problem which arises only in translation - viagiatore' with a single 'g' would simply be wrong.

From the Penguin paperback edition, 1988.

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Last modified: January 30, 2001.