Zenith (Life) by Maria Medem GN HC

Under an ever-present orange sun illuminating a desert landscape, two artisans, one for glass the other for clay, meet every day for lunch and chat. Both are sleepwalkers, but experience this phenomenon in drastically different ways. The potter hates his somnambulism, considers it an uncomfortable part of his being as if he shared a body with a stranger. Whenever he becomes aware of it, he suffers, a sense of anguish and despair invades him. The glassblower, however, is not nearly as bothered by being a sleepwalker. One night, he wakes up startled. Taken over by insomnia, he goes to his workshop and there he will make a horrifying discovering that will trigger the conclusion of this story. With an evocative colour palette ranging from deep blue to bright orange that will certainly remind one of George O’Keeffe’s paintings of the desert, enigmatic landscapes and atmospheres reminiscent of Giorgio De Chirico’s metaphysical paintings, Zenith is a book that gets under one’s skin and gets to the reader on a deeper, beyond rational level.