Wackelkontakt by Wolf Haas, 2026. A good read. Here’s the English blurb:

A clever, electrifying puzzle of a novel, inspired by MC Escher’s optical illusions, in which two mirrored plots—a man waiting for an electrician and a mafia informant entering witness protection—delightfully converge.

Franz Escher is waiting for the electrician. His power outlet has a loose connection. To pass the time, he buries himself in a book about a Mafioso-turned-informant Elio Russo. Elio is in jail, awaiting his imminent release into witness protection. He has betrayed so many people that he fears for his life. Unable to sleep, he lies awake at night reading a book about a man named Franz Escher who’s waiting for the electrician. His power outlet has a loose connection. . .

So begins Wolf Haas’s Short Circuit, an inventive new take on the detective novel. Styled after one of M. C. Escher’s impossible drawings, its two stories gradually intertwine only to solve each other, culminating in one final short circuit. A phenomenon after its German publication, this brilliantly entertaining novel promises to defy all expectation.

Translation by Jamie Bulloch, Short Circuit, 2026. Reads very well, ready for the English market.

One translation problem is that the Italian speaker Elio Russo is given a new identity as the German speaker Marko Steiner. There are sections of very bad German and a lot of vulgarity, as Russo is helped by a German-speaking fellow-prisoner whose German is rather coarse.

Here’s one passage about language: Marko is learning to repair bicycles, and every German term recalls similar-sounding words:

 

Obwohl das Land sich gerade auf eine neue Währung umgestellt hatte, fand Marko es sehr passend, dass man ein altes Rad in der alten Währung anbot. Er meldete sich bei dem Verkäufer, der zu seiner Überraschung jünger als das Fahrrad war, und handelte ihn um 20 D-Mark hinunter. Wer ein Fahrrad in einer neuen Sprache von 50 D-Mark auf 30 D-Mark runterhandelt, ist bald flügge. Beim Reparieren achtete Marko darauf, dass er an jeden Teil ein Wort schrauben konnte. Und an jeden Handgriff einen Satz. Sein Wörterbuch war nach ein paar Tagen schmieriger als die Kette. Ich schmiere die Kette. Ich demontiere die Schaltung. Ich entroste die Zahnräder. Wer rastet, der rostet. Ich raste. Ich raste aus. Nachdem er gerastet hatte, raste er los. Ich erneuere die Verkabelung. Ich stelle jede Speiche neu ein. Die Speiche, der Speichel. Der Speicher. Der Speichel rinnt, die Speiche rostet, der Speicher ist voll. Eine Speiche ist gebrochen und muss ausgetauscht werden. Die Speiche, die Felge. Elle und Speiche. Das Fell, die Felge. Das Kugellager. Das Zahnrad. Die Zahnspange.

In Jamie Bulloch’s translation:

Marko thought it most fitting that an old bike should be offered in the old one. He contacted the seller, who, to his surprise, was younger than the bicycle and knocked down the price by twenty marks. Anyone who can negotiate a bike down from fifty to thirty marks in a new language is soon going to be raring to go. When repairing the bike, Marko made sure that he could fix a word to every part and a phrase to every action. After a few days his lexicon was greasier than the chain. I grease the chain. I dismantle the gears. I derust the cogwheels. Who rests, rusts. I roast, I got roasted. After he had rested, he raced off. I renew the wiring. I put every spoke back in. The spoke, the spike. The park. The spoke rusts, the spike raps, the spare rips. A spoke is broken and needs to be replaced. The spoke, the rim. Speak, spoke, spoken. The rim, the rhyme. The ball bearing. The cog. The frog.

There’s a sampler translated page at New Books in German, with the title Loose Connection.
The term “loose connection” appears in the blurb above. The story starts with a loose connection but maybe the published thought “Short Circuit” was a punchier title?

I noticed that I saw Bulloch’s father as Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back at the BFI IMAX this year. And Bulloch has also translated Der letzte Sommer by Ricarda Huch, the first German book I ever read – I picked it out of a box our teacher offered us to borrow after O Levels.