This is a reissue in paperback of a novel that utterly vanished on its first publication in 1998. Since it is exceptionally good, it is worth explaining its disappearance. Review copies were sent out by Bellew, its original publisher, and copies were sent to the Society of Authors for submission to their Sagittarius Prize (best first novel by an author aged 60 and over), but ten days later Bellew went bust. The receivers sold all the stock to a remainders firm who took the view that The Danube Testament was unsaleable and pulped the whole edition. No copies went to bookshops. This does not quite explain why it was never reviewed if it is so good, but fiction from a small press has to fight hard for space in newspapers and bookshops. That the book went on to win the Sagittarius Prize must have been dim comfort for the author. In any case, it is surely one of the scarcest modern first editions in existence.
The Danube Testament is set in Vienna during the week of Aunt Mia’s visit to her nephew and niece, S. and Eva. She has come from New York, where she has lived for 50 years, to arrange for her eventual interment in the family vault. Being old and frail, she is accompanied by her granddaughter Amy, but it is Amy who is rushed to hospital when the plane touches down, to give premature birth to a ‘fatally marred’ baby. International phone lines buzz; the family gathers. The father, Charles Hawkins, arrives from Boston. Amy’s sister Beatrice arrives from Wales with her English lover, Brian, and Brian’s teenage daughter Sherrill in tow.
We are told at the outset that the week culminates in the baby’s murder by S.
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