Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone: A NovelStefan Kiesbye
Penguin Books, September 2012
ISBN: 978-0143121466
Shirley Jackson meets The Twilight Zone in this riveting novel of supernatural horror
Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone consists of a series of connected stories. It begins with the sparsely attended funeral of Anke, the final occupant of the von Kamphoff manor in the Village of Hemmersmoor. A widower named Christian Bobinski sets the stage with his description of Anke's funeral.
The stories that follow are told from the perspectives of individuals who, like Christian and Anke, lived in Hemmersmoor during their childhood and adolescence. Their stories are set in a time when concentration camps had only recently closed, and Germany was newly divided by a wall.
Told from the points of view of four children who grew up in this remote village. They are Christian, Anke, Martin and Linde. While the book reads like a collection of short stories the author ties them beautifully together from Christian's POV. Christen has returned home after a death in the family, and while there he revisits his youth.
Stefan Kiesbye's novel addresses the horror of spite and malice, of child abuse and incest, of missing children, of kids being cruel for the sake of cruelty, of friends who betray each other for selfish ends, of homeless children who die in the cold for lack of charity. This beautiful, haunting novel is the perfect read for anyone who appreciates a well-constructed, psychologically chilling plot.
STEFAN KIESBYE has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. Born on the German coast of the Baltic Sea, he studied in Buffalo, New York, and now lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and is the arts editor of Absinthe: New European Writing.
ISBN: 978-0143121466; ISBN10: 0143121464; Imprint: Penguin Books; On Sale: 9/25/2012; Format: Paperback; Pages: 208; $15.00
