When her parents die in a car accident, highly talented Austrian physicist Ruth Schwarz is confronted with a problem. Her parents’ will calls for them to be buried in their childhood home — but for strangers, the village of Gross-Einland remains stubbornly hidden from view.

When Ruth finally finds her way there, she makes a disturbing discovery: beneath the town lies a vast cavern that exerts a strange control over the lives of the villagers. There are hidden clues about the hole everywhere, but nobody wants to talk about it — not even when it becomes clear that the stability of the entire town is in jeopardy.

In the literary tradition of Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek, Raphaela Edelbauer’s tale of trauma and history weaves an opaque dream fabric that is frighteningly true to life, and in the process she turns us towards the abject horror that lies beneath repressed memory. The Liquid Land is a dangerous novel, at once glittering nightmare and dark reality, from an extraordinary new voice.

"‘A Freudian exploration of complicated grief.’" - The Times

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‘Ably translated from the German by Jen Calleja, Raphaela Edelbauer’s impressive debut novel is a subtle allegory of historical memory and collective guilt, combining a dreamy, gothic strangeness with whimsical humour and an element of farce … The novel’s deft blend of registers — at once uncannily foreboding and drily comic — makes for an absorbing and memorable tale.’

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‘Clever and compelling.’

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‘Highly intelligent and deeply eccentric … the writing has atmosphere and intensity and — most satisfyingly — an intoxicating strangeness.’

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‘An unfathomable and imaginative parable about Austria and how it dealt with its National Socialist past … philosophical and fantastic.’

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‘Edelbauer crosses borders and advances into unexplored areas of literature.’

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‘A village that officially does not exist and that seems to be disappearing more and more … Anyone who embarks on this trip is safely guided by Edelbauer — on a fine line between madness and adventure.’

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Praise for Raphaela Edelbauer:

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‘For a novel meticulously built on a series of familiar, strange, and compelling conceptual metaphors, The Liquid Land isn't a dense or overly taxing read — just the opposite, in fact. Ruth's brief meditations on the nature of time and space at the beginning of the novel become our entry-point into the first of many motifs Edelbauer spends the rest of the book unpicking: the fluidity of time and space in our social lives, the implications of ecological collapse, the permeability of natural and built worlds, and our attempt to make sense of the past, and more importantly, come to terms with it. With The Liquid Land, Raphaela Edelbauer has written a book that is oblique, familiar, and completely new. It's a fascinating, heady combination.’

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‘The Liquid Land is a tale that nods to the traditions of magical realism while also exploring the threat of a very real past. On one level, it deals with a practical problem that falls to the protagonist, Ruth. But in searching for the solution — a town that has written itself off the map — she uncovers a looming danger that threatens to engulf the place. An intoxicating adventure unfolds from this unique premise.’

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‘Fascinating and richly imaginative.’

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‘A dark and deliciously unique novel … An uncanny page-turner, The Liquid Land pits family drama and an eerie almost Hot Fuzz-like town against darker presences – whether physical, emotional, or historical. The end result is an engaging and thought-provoking piece of contemporary fiction.’