The Assistant

Published in 1908, THE ASSISTANT won a 2007 PEN Translation Fund Award. Joseph, hired as an inventor's new assistant, arrives one rainy Monday morning at Technical Engineer Carl Tabler's splendid hilltop villa: he is at once pleased and terribly worried, a state soon followed by even stickier psychological complexities. He enjoys the company of the proud wife, Frau Tabler, and the beautiful view over Lake Zurich, and the delicious savory meals. But does he deserve any of these pleasures? As he attempts to help the Tabler household (sliding toward financial ruin), THE ASSISTANT pours fourth Joseph's inner life of cascading emotions of exuberance, of despair, of all the rapture and panic of someone "drowning in obedience." 301p.