A review by charleslambert
Omega Minor by Paul Verhaeghen

4.0

I’ve just finished reading Omega Minor by the Belgian novelist Paul Verhaeghen, a cognitive psychologist now working in the States. Originally published in Dutch, this enormous novel – 700 pages of closely-printed text - was translated into English by its author, winning the Independent Foreign Fiction prize in the process. The English, like the novel itself, is constantly inventive, and slightly quirky; Verhaeghen has stated that he decided to do the translation himself after seeing the lamentable job a professional translator had done of a section of the book, and I can well believe it. It isn’t a job I’d have taken on willingly, and certainly not at the rates a work this size inevitably attracts if it’s to exist at all. It’s a sprawling, superficially confused, engagingly unwieldy sort of book that resists unity of style, that resists, in many ways, any kind of unity at all, except that provided by its existence as an attractive, slightly austere, well-made physical artefact, for which we have, once more, the Dalkey Archive to thank.

The narrative arc of the novel covers much of the last century, with key events clustering around the opposing poles of the Second World War and the destruction of the Berlin wall. Geographically, its heart is Berlin, although long sections are set in New York and Los Alamos, and one short section in an improbably glamorous Bath, a place I suspect Verhaeghen has never seen. It’s a book that barely acknowledges a world beyond that defined by mid-twentieth century Europe and the post-war diaspora, except – in the case of Japan - as a target for the nuclear bomb. There’s no reason why it should. It has more than enough on its plate as it is.

You can read the rest of my review here.