Seven Lies: A Novel Horror Book Review

A darkly brilliant tale by a writer whose last novel was “a masterpiece” (Washington Post) and “Poe for the 21st century” (Salon).

Part political thriller, part meditation on the nature of desire and betrayal, Seven Lies tells the story of Stefan Vogel, a young man growing up in the former East Germany, whose yearnings for love, glory, and freedom express themselves in a lifelong fantasy of going to America. By a series of blackly comic and increasingly dangerous maneuvers, he contrives to make his fantasy come true, finding himself not only in the country of his dreams but also married to the woman he idolizes. America seems everything he expected, and his secrets are safely locked away behind the Berlin Wall. A new life of unbounded bliss seems to have been granted to him. And then the world begins to fall apart.

Skillfully rendered and compulsively readable, Seven Lies secures James Lasdun’s stature as a novelist of the highest order.