The ghost of Harry Lime seems to be haunting the publishing houses of London. Graham Greene’s infamous anti-hero may have come to a sticky end in the Viennese sewers but his spirit lives on in several debut novels immersed in the noir world of post-war Europe.
Hedi Kaddour’s Waltenburg (Harvill/ Secker, £20) is the most wide-ranging and ambitious of these. The book begins with the maelstrom inflicted on a French cavalry unit during the Great War before coursing through the second world war to the principal narrative of a 1950s CIA operation. The Hotel Waldhaus in the Swiss mountain village of Waltenburg proves the hub around which a German writer, an American singer, a French journalist and a shady, unidentified mole love and betray one another. Kaddour’s idiosyncratic prose, which plays fast and loose with grammatical convention, is as creative as a black market passport. The result is a long read (at 640 pages) but one that still manages to grip like an ill-gotten dossier.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in