Lost, by Hans-Ulrich Treichel, translated by Carol Brown Janeway (Picador, £5.00 in UK)

Post-war German fiction has certainly been dominated by Gⁿnter Grass, one of the most original, imaginative and angry of literature's contemporary masters., yet his presence has not proved oppressive considering the quality of current German writers led by W.G. Sebald.

While the literature of protest defined the fiction of Eeastern Europe, particularly the Russian, Czech, Ruomanian and Polish,Germany's looks to contemplation of itself and the second World War remains its prevailing great theme. Treichel's inspired little novel looks at emotional theft, fear, self-protection and the inadequacy of survival through the eyes of a small boy whose life is warped by parents who remain suspended in their grief. During flight from the advancing Russian army, the family somehow lost their eldest son, then a baby. Their second boy had to live with his brother's ghost and then the even darker shadow of his possible return. Various mad, half-spoken stories become a family history. The deadpan narrator is candid, bewildered, all-seeing and all-suffering. Tragic, strange and agonisingly funny, Lost terrifies through its logic and grasp of truth adrift in an atmosphere of crazy hope and helpless despair.