The Escape

Haffner is charming, morally suspect, vain, obsessed by the libertine emperors. He is British and Jewish and a widower. But Haffner’s attachments to his nation, his race, his marriage, have always been matters of conjecture. They have always been subjects of debate. There are many stories of Haffner—but this, the most secret, is the greatest of them all. The Escape opens in a spa town snug in the unfashionable eastern Alps, where Haffner has come to claim his wife’s inheritance. How can you ever escape your past, your family, your history? That is the problem of Haffner’s story in The Escape. That has always been the problem of Haffner—and his lifetime of metamorphoses and disappearances. How might Haffner ever become unattached? The Escape is a swift, sad farce of sexual mayhem by a brilliant young novelist The New York Times has called “a prodigy and, as such, unstoppable."