REVIEWS
Lost classic predicted our dystopian future
There can be few greater pleasures in literature than the recovery of a previously lost classic. The slim dystopian novella Termush by Sven Holm is one such rediscovery, having languished in the Faber archives for decades until uncovered recently by their classics editor.
The book was originally published in the author’s native Denmark in 1967 and translated into English by Sylvia Clayton in 1969. This repackaged edition comes with an effusive introduction by Jeff VanderMeer and rightly so.
From its opening page, Termush is a creepy and enigmatic masterpiece, setting a tone of weird paranoia that drags the reader headlong into a wonderfully realised post-apocalyptic world.
The unnamed narrator is one of a host of rich guests at Hotel Termush who, at great expense, purchased places in the residence before the apocalypse. The elite residents survived a nuclear holocaust within Termush’s bunkers, emerging to a life in the hotel that seems unaffected by what has happened.
