Rudolf von Waldenfels | Finding Yourself

They had shown up drunk. Careful not to be seen, he looked out the window. Young men, huddled around a car, were laughing, pushing each other, holding bottles. The nearest town was five kilometers away. "No one would come to my aid. No one would even know where to look, since I hadn't told anyone about this place, not even my wife..."

This woman: She remains outside the text. But you can see her, her arms dangling. Since his cancer diagnosis, her husband hadn't been himself. After the first operation, he was told he only had a year to live. With the second, a sigh of relief: "I was like a defendant who had expected the death penalty but was surprisingly acquitted." But instead of being happy, he felt hollow. One night, he looked out of the bathroom window into the darkness: "I had to get out of there. Something magnificent, exciting, infinitely adventurous was waiting for me..." His wife didn't stop him as he left the house one November evening.

On his back he carried "a small backpack with some provisions and a spare set of clothes." "I came out into the open country. The black tar road shimmered damply, as if it had been coated with glossy varnish. On both sides stretched dark meadows, from which here and there rose the black silhouettes of trees or patches of woodland." And then the road disappeared into the forest.

As you read, you'll enjoy wonderful descriptions of nature, share wonder and fear. The power of language meets elemental forces. Fear is supposed to be driven out by fear—and it actually works. Rudolf von Waldenfels, born in 1965, a former writer at the Vienna Burgtheater, experienced it all firsthand. We wouldn't want to swap places with him; we're thrilled to see how he survives. And we're continually captivated by the magic of the night.

The abandoned building with its broken windows becomes a "house of forgotten dreams" for him. Memories flare up: of the violent father from whom the boy hid, of his beloved sister who met a mysterious death, of his grandfather's war experiences, of his own past in a radical environmental group, of earlier hikes and strange experiences. "Facing the primal terror was important, essential."

Mysterious and miraculous. In the hospital, his belief that he was "somehow protected, somehow cared for" was shattered. Now the forest appears to him like a cathedral and a sky, "which was currently hidden behind billions of floating snowflakes, but which would soon reveal itself to me in all its glory." An authentic experience, described from a first-person perspective so stirring and thrilling that you can't put the book down. Also because it can inspire you to see how someone finds themselves.

Rudolf von Waldenfels: Into the Night. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 148 pp., paperback, €20.