The Fabric of Night: A Novel [Hardcover]

Christoph Peters (Author), John Cullen (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2007

Albin Kranz, a twenty-eight-year-old sculptor and the son of an abusive father, is melancholic, alcoholic, and beset by painful memories of his childhood. Although he tries to make sense out of what has happened to him, his consciousness frequently becomes altered and he seems to be hallucinating. At her wits end, Livia, a photographer with whom he has lived for five years, suggests that they go to Istanbul to give their love one last chance.

Their vacation gets off to an ominous start. One morning as he is standing on the roof terrace of his hotel, Albin witnesses the murder of Miller, an American gem dealer, at the hotel across the way. But like some desperately misunderstood character in a Hitchcock film, Albin can’t persuade anyone of what he saw, nor can he find any proof. The hotel manager denies having a guest named Miller, and the woman Albin saw with Miller at the time of the shooting is nowhere to be found. Obsessed with the crime, Albin tells his tale to a group of German students studying in Istanbul, but they, too, refuse to take him seriously. When Livia falls in love with one of the students, Albin hurls himself into discovering the truth about Miller’s death. His quest takes him into the slums of the city and deep into the mysterious, exotic Eastern culture few Western visitors ever penetrate.

Told by two narrators—the cool retelling of events by the German student Olaf Rademacher and the frenzied, feverish voice of Albin—The Fabric of Night is a profound reflection on the nature of illusion and reality. It is a crime story, a psychological drama, a nightmare, and a double tale of disintegrating love. Beautifully written by one of the most promising novelists in Germany today, The Fabric of Night is frightening and fascinating.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of Peters's challenging second novel, his first to be published in English, 28-year-old sculptor Albin Kranz is relaxing on the terrace of his Istanbul hotel when he witnesses the murder of an American "who looked like Marlon Brando in old age" at an adjacent hotel. But neither his wife, Livia, nor the group of German art students the couple meet in Turkey, nor the clerk at the victim's hotel believes him, because Kranz is alcoholic, his brain in a feverish, nightmarish state. His first-person narrative is a stream of memories, fears and delusions ("I've become part of an alien organism"). Kranz's musings are interspersed with the almost equally opaque commentary of one of the art students. This ambitious book contains some striking bits of Turkish cultural travelogue and the kind of intensity one might expect from young artist intellectuals, but the oblique storytelling makes it a tough read. (Jan.)
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Review

"A multilayered story of suspense, relationships, and doubts....The Fabric of Night is a disturbing but worthwhile look into the human psyche, showing just how much territory that can encompass."
--The Miami Herald

"Absorbing and strangely satisfying...The Fabric of Night breaks rules and gets away with it. It looks like a thriller, acts like a character study and leaves the reader pondering its own narrative structure."
--The Washington Post Book World

“A magical labyrinth; Christoph Peters is the most sophisticated and extraordinary of today’s German literary fiction writers. The Fabric of Night is the only German novel about alcoholism that can rival Macolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. It is one of the rare books that readers should be warned about: it gets right under your skin. It keeps you hooked from the very beginning and when you finish it you are no longer the same.”
–Die Welt

“The Fabric of Night is an extremely skillful, sophisticated, and romantic love storyÉWith this artfully crafted and yet delightfully readable novel, Christoph Peters has written one of the most enigmatic, most romantic and maybe one of the most disturbing books I have seen for some time.”
–Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung

“Ambitious and perfect in form–a novel of flawless artistic beauty. If Christoph Peters continues in such a manner German fiction has found a new master.”
–Passauer Neue Presse

“An artfully constructed novel that rewards both the mind and senses of the readerÉFor those who let themselves be drawn into the intoxicating vortex that is The Fabric of Night, it will be a book not for one night, but for 1,001 nights.”
–Financial Times Deutschland

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese; 1 edition (January 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385514476
• ISBN-13: 978-0385514477
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,126,471 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Says More About Germans than Istanbul, April 10, 2007

By 

Go Chu "Go Chu" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fabric of Night: A Novel (Hardcover)

My wife game this book as a birthday gift thinking that I would be interested in the story (murder mystery taking place in Istanbul). Make no mistake, this book is about young intellectual (and alcoholic) Germans than any murder story taking place in Istanbul. It is tough reading and is interesting in its portrayal of the seedy underworld of Istanbul. But, in the end, you learn more about the mindset of a dissatisfied, abused and avant garde pseudo-artist.

2.0 out of 5 stars Adrift in Istanbul, May 9, 2011

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Fabric of Night (Paperback)

This is one of those books that if you start trying to explain what happens in it to someone else, it sounds kind of interesting and possibly enjoyable. An artist couple from Germany who are vacationing in Istanbul in a last-ditch effort to save their unhealthy relationship when the man (a 28-year-old sculptor) witnesses the apparent murder of an American businessman in an adjacent hotel. However, when he runs over to sound the alarm, the desk clerk insists that no one of that description is staying at the hotel, and thus the sculptor starts sleuthing. Sounds like a classic Hitchcock story, doesn't it?

However, the sculptor is an alcoholic, somewhat manic, an entirely unreliable narrator, and his voice occupies every other chapter, often in rambling stream of consciousness gobbledygook. Meanwhile, the other half of the chapters revolve around a group of German art students who are exploring the city with their professor and end up linking up with the sculptor and his girlfriend. Their perspective is narrated by one of the students, who is recounting the trip's events much later. The result of all this is a story that is constantly shifting underfoot and very hard to settle down with. When done right, that kind of approach can be very enjoyable, however, here it just feels annoying.

The author appears to be toying around with notions of illusion vs. reality, but that theme has been bludgeoned to death in the last ten years of fiction and film, often in far more entertaining and illuminating fashion. In an interview, he also claimed to be making some kind of statement about how the West views Turkey (all the Turkish characters are portrayed as exotic Eastern "types" such as the haggling rug merchant, the crafty and dangerous gypsies, the inscrutable and possibly cunning hotel clerk, etc.) However, it's hard to understand what the point of such games are in the context of an already chaotic story. But the biggest problem is that there is no one to connect to, even peripherally. The sculptor is a self-destructive menace, and the students are generally interchangeable ciphers. Unless you're really interested in unreliable narrators in fiction, this book has little to offer.