Shortlisted for the German Book Prize

An eerie and uncanny mystery, reminiscent of early Pynchon, and the American debut of one of the most acclaimed young European novelists.

In the Austrian state of Styria lies the Helianau Institute, a boarding school for children born with a mysterious condition known as Indigo syndrome. Anyone who comes near them immediately suffers from nausea and vertigo. Clemens Setz—a fictionalized doppelgänger of the author—is a young math teacher who loses his job at the school after attempting to investigate the mysterious “relocations” of several children. Fourteen years later, Robert, a former student, discovers a newspaper article about Setz’s acquittal for the murder of an animal abuser. Could there be a connection between this story, which continues to haunt Robert, and the puzzling events of the past? De Lillo-esque in its exploration of alienation and anxiety, Indigo weaves together bizarre historical anecdotes, such as Edison’s electrocution of an elephant, with pop cultural marginalia and pseudoscience to create a “literary work that makes its own laws . . . rich in dialogue and variety, amusing and anecdotal, but also brutal and unfathomable” (
Der Spiegel).

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Ross Benjaminis an acclaimed German-language translator. He lives in Nyack, New York.