Klabund - This hectic, creepy autobiographical story about a young man who suffers a hemorrhage in Berlin and is haunted by bizarre figures and delusions in his twilight state can be seen as both a late entry into the Decadent pantheon and a striking example of Expressionist fiction

 

Klabund, Spook. Trans. by Jonah Lubin.

Snuggly Books, 2023

“Klabund” was the pseudonym employed by Alfred Henschke (1890-1928), who wrote, from January to April 1921, “during the fever of an illness,” the novel Spook, which is here presented for the first time in ­English, in a translation by Jonah Lubin.

This hectic, creepy autobiographical story about a young man who suffers a hemorrhage in Berlin and is haunted by bizarre figures and delusions in his twilight state can be seen as both a late entry into the Decadent pantheon and a striking example of Expressionist fiction. A haunting and harrowing tale, which seems to have been composed at least in part under the effects of morphine, Spook is, in its own troubled way, a glorious book, and a gorgeous poem of madness.

Alfred Henschke (1890-1928). Born in Crossen, Poland, he studied in Germany and Switzerland, before abandoning these activities, in 1912, to become a poet. He published numerous volumes of fiction, poetry, and plays, including Moreau (1916), Der Neger (1920), and Die Nachtwandler (1920). He died in Davos of pneumonia exacerbated by tuberculosis, which he had had since he was sixteen.