This book was recommended to me emphatically by Eleanor Crook, who I’ve already mentioned above. This story is five pages short. I don’t want to say very much about it, in part because it has helped me peel back another route into Book Three. I might say that this is a story about the city, about loneliness, and about objects – to borrow from Peter Schwenger (well, Virgil really), the tears of things. I will give you one line only: “And she was to live in this room, alone and lonely, an intruder among the memories of others who had lived here before her.” Thank you so much Barbara Neuwirth.

From The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy: 1890-2000 edited and translated by Mike Mitchell, Dedalus, 2003