Flusfeder, David

(British, 1960– )

Flusfeder lives in London and has worked as a reviewer. He writes with black humour and great inventiveness. Like Plastic (1997), his second novel, is a tale of Jewish family life as you have never read it before; brothers Howard and Charlie jointly own the family firm (plastics). They hate each other, and Howard does a bunk from his responsibilities both at work and at home, where his self-contained wife and teenage children reinvent their lives without him. There is a surreal element to their behaviour (the son locks himself in his room and doesn't come out for three years, whilst other family members come and whisper their secrets under his door), yet the emotional truth and complexity of the characters is utterly convincing. Man Kills Woman (1993) also deals humorously with devastating issues. Morocco (2000) is set in a fictional European city, and is based on events in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941. It vividly creates the sense of the danger, fragility, horror, and surreal comedy of life in wartime.

Glenn Patterson, Jenny Diski, Martin Amis  JR