A city with deteriorating houses. A pristine house seemingly without inhabitants. Inhabitants of a world no longer human. In a remarkable collection of stories, Ernst-Wilhelm Handler conducts us into a world where nothing is quite as we know it, or quite what we might expect. In these stories, Handler creates a series of possible worlds, some resembling those we experience on an regular basis, some existing in startling opposition to everyday life. Among them: Eastern Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall; Austria during World War II; a dystopia of a dyslexic matriarchal society; and a...