In a constant state of near hallucination due to over-indulgence in prescription drugs, he’s finding it harder and harder to distinguish reality from his nightmarish fantasies. To outward appearances, Eric is a successful financial broker, but in reality he has been defrauding his clients for years and fears he’s about to be found out. Martin, a priest who doesn’t believe in God, sees the other men of his generation advancing in the Church while he grows fat and breathless, and spends his life hoping no-one asks him any questions about the meaning of his faith (though he has a stock answer that stands him in good stead – ‘It’s a Mystery!’). We next meet the sons when they are in their middle years, the promise of youth having faded into failure for each. And incorporated into the book is a history of Arthur’s forebears, stretching back for centuries, showing how eventually, in one way or another, they all went away and ‘never came back’. With its message that no-one exists, not even the reader, it achieves notoriety when it provokes a brief spate of suicides. The three boys, identical twins Ivan and Eric and their half-brother Martin, are young adults when suddenly Arthur’s new book, My Name is No One, becomes a sensation. But a couple of hours later, he lets the boys out of the car and drives off, not to be seen or heard of again for years. When unsuccessful author Arthur Friedland takes his three young sons to see a stage hypnotist, he doesn’t expect it to change his life. Starting today, you’re going to make an effort. “This is an order, and you’re going to follow it because you want to follow it, and you want to because I’m ordering you, and I’m ordering you because you want me to give the order. “Then listen to me,” Lindemann put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder.

F daniel kehlmann