The Labyrinth By Gerhard Roth

Since 1974, Gerhard Roth has frequently employed the genre of the crime novel to explore individuals and their relation to contemporary society. The Labyrinth is the fourth volume of Roth’s novel series Orkus, published in 2005 to critical acclaim – and confusion. An actual conflagration in the labyrinthine Viennese Imperial Palace, the Hofburg, is the impetus for five purported narrators – a one-eyed psychiatrist, an unspeaking schizophrenic painter, a pyromaniacal student, a sexually promiscuous female speech therapist and a writer (strangely resembling Roth) – to tell the story sequentially, each relating part of the story, each displaying his or her own tendency to madness; they are monomaniacs all. But it remains a mystery as to who actually writes what, who does what, since the vocabulary, voice, style, and manner are similar in all five, thus creating a veritable narrative labyrinth.