The Shadow is the third novel by German author, Melanie Raabe. It is flawlessly translated from German by Imogen Taylor. Abandoning her job, her home, her boyfriend and her dog, in January 2017, journalist Norah Richter heads to Vienna. A libel suit has eliminated any chance of her keeping her job, and she’s been head-hunted by the publisher of an Austrian magazine, so staying in Berlin isn’t really an option.

But mere hours after her arrival in Vienna, a rather creepy old woman pronounces that Norah will kill a man called Arthur Grimm at the Prater on February 11th with good reason, of her own free will. Norah decides this bizarre prophecy is best ignored; she dismisses the relevance of that date as coincidental.

Norah does have some friends in Vienna, but she sees herself as an introvert, independent, self-sufficient, and quite happy to be living alone. For a while. But her work colleagues find her stand-offish, her flat is cold and sterile, and pangs of loneliness emerge, especially after some uncharacteristically terse communications from her Vienna friends, who then seem to withdraw. The upstairs tenant in her building tries to befriend her, but Norah is resistant.

Then strange things begin happening: items go missing from her flat while others appear; the prophesised Arthur Grimm’s name comes up more than once; Norah feels she is being watched; she comes across a drowning victim; and she starts receiving strange anonymous text messages. A bit of research soon has her, incredibly, actually considering committing that murder.

Raabe skilfully builds her plot, isolating Norah from her support base, unnerving her with slightly disturbing signs that trigger unhappy memories and instilling doubts about a trauma from her teenage years. The astute reader will quickly identify how this is being achieved, and by whom, but the ultimate reason for it, and the architect of the scheme remain a mystery that gradually unfolds.

Norah comes across as aggressively principled and quite prickly, so perhaps not all that likeable, but by the time the final revelations are made, she will certainly be better understood. This is a brilliant psychological thriller with a distinctly European feel.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Text Publishing.