Peter Flamm "Me?" Moscow: Corpus, 2024

Escape is also the subject of Peter Flamm's 1926 novel, which was widely acclaimed but later forgotten. Flamm was the pseudonym of psychiatrist and writer Erich Mosse, who fled Nazi Germany in 1933. The story centers on a military doctor who, returning home after the end of World War I, still can't convince himself that he, Hans Stern, is alive. Or is it not he who is alive, but the baker Wilhelm Bettuch, who stole the passport and identity of his murdered comrade? From the very first lines, the reader is trapped in a superposition, unable to escape until the end of the story. And even in the end, it's not quite so easy: "I?" is simultaneously a professionally rendered portrait of post-traumatic stress disorder and a modernist statement about the limits of humanity.
"I'm at the door, I open it, it's pitch dark, there's no one there, maybe I'm hearing things, maybe it's just the hot blood rushing in my ears, or mines from the battle, or maybe I'm dead..."

