Based on a massacre in an Austrian town at the end of the second world war, this thoughtful novel confronts the long shadow of Nazism

In the small Austrian town of Darkenbloom, near the Hungarian border, tempers are flaring at a public meeting. The mayor gives a speech; the vintner explodes in protest. Some cheer, while others bang on tables. The vintner declares that he is tired of deception. “Scratch the surface with your fingernail anywhere in Darkenbloom,” he shouts, “and you uncover some new abomination!” He is right, and not just about dodgy council dealings. Darkenbloom is a town of nasty, close-held secrets: a place where it is dangerous, sometimes even fatal, to expose the truth.

Unearthing, digging up and truth-hunting run through Darkenbloom, the latest novel by the Berlin-based Austrian author Eva Menasse. Originally trained as a journalist, Menasse published a book of reportage on David Irving’s trial for Holocaust denial before turning to fiction with her 2005 novel Vienna, which explores her part-Jewish family’s 20th century. She has since established herself as a progressive public intellectual, speaking out against antisemitism and, more recently, Germany’s unqualified support for the military actions of Israel. In Darkenbloom, she fictionalises the story of Rechnitz, a town in Austria where a massacre of at least 180 Jewish-Hungarian forced labourers took place in early 1945 – and where the elder townsfolk enforced a conspiracy of silence that lasted into the 2000s. Many key facts, including the location of most of the bodies, remain unknown.