Knut takes place during WWII in the house of the Strobls, a Norwegian aristocratic estate populated by leeching relatives, ruled by the loveless widow Madame Strobl. Sickly son and heir Knut writes of his early life in a confessional manuscript handed to his doting sister Katya, for whom he nurtures intolerable incestuous desires. Knut is a darkly comic take on the gothic novel told in a prose style that captures the tension, violence, and decay of its setting, and parodies its cast of beastly hangers-on and contemptuous aristocrats. A largely neglected artist and writer, Tom Mallin published...