Fever of Animals

Until very recently, people believed that certain paintings contained a remnant of a magic force. Bafdescu stood at the crest of this faith, just before the wave broke, when it seemed that the magic force was not only real, but could actually be applied to life, to politics, to reality itself ...

In a hut on the edge of a frozen German forest, Miles, a failed artist, sits down to write a book about Emil Bafdescu, the elusive Surrealist painter who walked into the woods in January 1967 and was never seen again.

Instead Miles finds himself besieged by questions about his own disintegrating life. Unable to paint, he is haunted by memories of a disturbing incident that took place in Venice years earlier - the city where Bafdescu's own life was also changed forever.

From London to Romania via Italy, Berlin and South America, Miles contends with a history that remains tantalisingly out of reach. In order to uncover Bafdescu's secret life, he realises he must first reckon with his own.