RaveThe Financial TimesOnly the house and its silent gardener remain constant. Inhabitants come and go – the departees rarely of their own volition. Their fates, unfailingly related, make painful reading. Time drifts past in a dreamlike way – one minute it’s 1892, then three pages later the boxer Max Schmeling has knocked out Joe Louis (1936). The many shifts in perspective are handled with immense skill ... Though just 150 pages long, Visitation has the epic trajectory of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. This impressive achievement is a deeply engaging panorama of Germany’s troubling 20th-century history.
