"Full of memorable images and singing lines of prose." Sarah Waters
on Donald S. Murray's previous work
From the author of the multi award-winning Scottish bestseller
As the Women Lay Dreaming comes the remarkable "unreliable
biography" of serial swindler Karl Einarsson.
As a child of the late nineteenth century in the North Atlantic's
windswept, fog-bound Faroe Islands, Karl Einarsson grows up believing he
is superior to his peers, destined for a life of art and adventure. As
soon as he is old enough, he sets out for Denmark and begins his own
reinvention.
Once untethered from his past, Einarsson's lies begin to spiral. He
begins a life of serial scamming, swindling everyone from fishermen to
aristocrats. He has set his sights on Atlantis, but when his schemes
find him in 1930s Berlin, for the first time Einarsson is forced to
reckon with something bigger than himself. As the Nazis rise to power
around him, his indifference becomes unwitting complicity, and even
betrayal.
Based on the true story of Karl Einarsson's life, this is an outlandish
tale of island claustrophobia, of those who leave and those who stay
behind, and the many dangers of delusions, deceit, and false
identities.
