Glorious Nemesis, Hardcover/Ladislav Klima

Klima's intense inner life and complex mental state is reflected in his peculiar writings. The eccentricity of style and occasional violence found in his prose were intended to convey the deep conflicts attending his thought processes, and this is perhaps best exemplified in the novella Glorious Nemesis. Set in the Tyrol (inspired by Klima's extended stay in Landeck), it is a balladic tale that explores the metaphysics of love and death. Sider, a man of twenty-eight, is confronted by a giant mountain named Deer's Head and an ancient, single-story house standing at the end of a small lane under a high, black cliff. Out one day on a hike, he encounters two women who will mark his fate: the elder Errata and the younger Orea, dressed in blue. From this point on Sider is on a quest for the All, for absolute Desire, and to connect with eternity. Willing to risk his entire fortune and sanity, he succumbs to his dreams and hallucinations as Orea, or her doppelganger, becomes for him the manifestation of Jungian anima. In homage to the goddess Nemesis, Sider becomes initiated into the mysteries of life and death.