Donal Mclaughlin

A magnificent example of Widmer’s characteristic humor, literary genius, and unparalleled imagination. In the wildly entertaining novel The Blue Soda Siphon, the narrator unexpectedly finds himself back in the world of his childhood: Switzerland in the 1940s. He returns to his childhood home to find his parents frantic because their son is missing. Then, in another switch, the young boy that he was back then turns up in the present of the early 1990s, during the Gulf War, where he meets himself as an older man, and meets his adult self’s young daughter. These head-scratching, hilarious time shifts happen when both the adult narrator and his childhood self go to the cinema and see films, the subjects of which echo their own lives. Translated into English for the first time by Donal McLaughlin, this novel, in which the eponymous blue soda siphon bottle is a recurring symbol, is a magnificent example of Urs Widmer’s characteristic humor, literary genius, and unparalleled imagination.

Liam O'Donnel, an Irish boy growing up in Scotland, is often the focus of Donal McLaughlin's hilarious and harrowing short stories, and in beheading the virgin mary, he continues this loose narrative, interspersed -- every second story -- with unrelated reports. Here, Liam steps in dog dirt on his way to Sunday Mass; Bloody Sunday is experienced as a series of phone calls to the home of a Scottish neighbor; and the title story introduces the next generation of O'Donnells. With his keen ear and inimitable spirit, the always innovative McLaughlin is one of the brightest lights of contemporary European fiction.