It gives me great pleasure to announce the publication of The Academy Outside of Ingolstadt, a short novel that I wrote over a period of several months throughout the course of 2016. The book will be published on the Mount Abraxas imprint of Ex Occidente Press in Bucharest, featuring illustrations by Sasha Schneider and cover illustrations by the extremely talented Oliver Liebeskind. This book comprises what is easily the longest and most complex piece of fiction I've yet written. Among many other things, it is an homage to the work of Robert Walser and Octave Mirbeau.
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On the eve of the Great War, a young man is sent away from home to spend a two-year period in an exclusive boarding school outside of Ingolstadt. What he’s done to merit his selection is a mystery to him, yet his family life is less than ideal and he finds himself drawn to the unfamiliar rigors of the Academy. The school maintains a pretense of nobility, and yet the teachings are perplexing and obscure, the rules and regulations only partially revealed, and the methods of instruction are replete with unexpected perils. By way of stealth, adversity, provocation, and deception, the novitiate is compelled to face a treacherous ordeal that very nearly leads to his undoing.
Several decades later he returns to the school, taking a position as a member of the faculty. As the secrets of his past are gradually unveiled before him, he finds himself once more upon the precipice of an abyss. After a final revelation, he comes at last to comprehend the true nature and extent of the Academy’s teachings.
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