In these hair-raising stories from the celebrated filmmaker and author Rudolph Herzog, millennial Berliners discover that the city is still the home of many unsettled-and deeply unsettling-ghosts. And those ghosts are not very happy about the newcomers.
Thus the coddled daughter of a rich tech executive finds herself slowly tormented by the poltergeist of a Weimer-era labourer, and a German intelligence officer confronts a troll wreaking havoc upon the city's unbuilt airport. An undead Nazi sympathizer romances a Greek émigré, while Turkish migrants curse the gentrifiers that have evicted them.
Herzog's keen observational eye and acid wit turn modern city stories into deliciously dark satires that ride the knife-edge of suspenseful and terrifying.
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[WHEN HE WAS THIRTEEN, DIMITRI had his first asthma attack - TANDEM]***
(Melville House Publishing, 1 October 2019, 190 pages, ebook, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)
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First off, these aren't ghost stories, not by a long shot. I decided to read this collection by a writer I'd never heard of before because I was expecting some supernatural, creepy ghost stories. I didn't get that at all. There are odd events in each story but too vague to be classed as ghosts or even a supernatural event. Shoehorning ghosts into the title and blurb of thes e stories is clearly a ploy to dupe readers. The stories are just okay but I didn't think they were anything special. The stories are really about how the past can continue to 'haunt' the present. I wasn't impressed.