At the centre of this novel, the first by the bestselling Austrian author to be translated into English, is a family and at the centre of the family is a young woman, Maria. The family live in a valley on the western edge of Austria – it is 1914 – and are known by the nearby villagers as “die Bagage” (the undesirables, the riff-raff) because they are poor and because “the kids are half wild”. And Maria is a woman whose exquisite beauty provokes both lust and resentment.
So when Maria’s husband, Josef, is conscripted to serve in the first world war, the postman is a bit too pleased to be delivering Josef’s call-up papers and imagines himself “the sort of man who could show a lot of tender affection if it came to it”.
