Short Circuit

“Highly entertaining. But it’s not just one book; it’s at least three in one, all of which are highly enjoyable. He plays cleverly with form and structure—not just as a gimmick but as a fundamental part of the story. Wolf Haas has mastered the rules of writing so completely that he can just as easily ignore them.”—Der Spiegel

A clever, electrifying puzzle of a novel, inspired by MC Escher’s optical illusions, in which two mirrored plots —a man waiting for an electrician and a mafia informant entering witness protection— delightfully converge.

Franz Escher is waiting for the electrician. His power outlet has a loose connection. To pass the time, he buries himself in a book about a Mafia key witness named Elio Russo. Elio is in jail, awaiting release. He has betrayed so many people that he fears for his life. Unable to sleep, he lies awake at night reading a book about a man named Franz Escher who’s waiting for the electrician. His power outlet has a loose connection.

In Short Circuit, a dazzling display of literary pyrotechnics styled after one of M. C. Escher’s impossible drawings, two different stories gradually intertwine to solve each other. It is a brilliant, inventive detective novel that becomes an electrifying show of sparks culminating in one final short circuit.

Author Biography

Wolf Haas was born in 1960 and has received multiple international prizes, including the Bremen Literature Prize, the Wilhelm Raabe Prize, and the Jonathan Swift Prize. His novels include Property, which won the 2024 Erich Kästner Prize; The Weather Fifteen Years Ago; Defense of the Missionary Position; Young Man; as well as nine Detective Brenner crime novels. He lives in Vienna.