Cora Dulz is a psychiatrist, married and in her mid-thirties, with a husband, a tax consultant, uninterested in anything except cutting articles about unusual deaths out of the newspapers. Professionally Cora's life has reached a state of crisis. Two of her patients have recently committed suicide. Now she has a new patient: Stanislaus Nagy, a young man who is obsessed with the dead opera singer Maria Callas and claims she appears to him in visions. Contrary to professional etiquette she meets him outside the consulting room and falls in love with him. Nagy refuses to have an affair with her. He claims to be the Devil and to have inhabited Callas's black poodle. He disappears, only to be found by Cora performing in a variety theatre as a magician under the name of the Great Bagarozy. Helmut Krausser blends reality, fantasy and the supernatural in very bizarre and unusual ending. A deliciously disturbed story of obsession and madness, The Great Bagarozy begins when psychiatrist Cora Dulz accepts a new patient, Stanislaus Nagy. Dissatisfied with her career and bored with her marriage, Cora is immediately intrigued by this strange man, who claims to have visions of the late, great diva Maria Callas. Breaking with routine, Cora agrees to meet Nagy outside therapy--a mistake, as she recognizes as soon as she has made it. Cora's intrigue quickly turns to infatuation and then to obsession as Nagy's behavior becomes more erratic. When Nagy suddenly stops keeping his appointments, Cora abandons husband and practice to follow Nagy in an attempt to discover his mysterious secret. Who is he? Why is he obsessed with Callas? And what does he really want from Cora? Krausser spins a tale of supernatural strangeness, moving from the mundane to the mystical as Nagy's life story unfolds. The Great Bagarozy is gripping, a philosophical inquiry disguised as a bizarre work of fiction that combines the mythical and the theological with ease. Bonnie Johnston The cultures of psychiatry and celebrity worship are memorably skewered in this ingenious fantasy of satanic possession and perhaps delusion, a 1997 novel by a prizewinning and critically acclaimed German writer now making his American debut. In a city that's probably Berlin, fortyish Cora Dulz maintains a middlingly successful psychiatric practice (two of her patients have recently committed suicide) and a placid relationship with her husband Robert, a tax consultant in whom all passion seems, not just spent, but obliterated and long forgotten. In fact, Robert has his passion: a collection of ``stories about strange deaths,'' culled from newspapers and magazines, from which Krausser frequently offers hilarious comic-horrible examples. Cora's own life takes a revivifying turn when a mysteriously attractive new patient, Stanislaus Nagy, recounts his obsession with the late soprano Maria Callas, provoking in Cora a sexual attraction he seems uninterested in reciprocating. Following a few sessions (the story is divided into the ``Weeks'' of his therapy) and a bizarre after-hours adventure together, he confesses that he's actually ``the Devil,'' while rambling on in ardent detail about Callas's ignoble beginnings, spectacular career, and ruinous relationship with billionaire Aristotle Onassis (not a bad demonic figure himself)and explaining his infatuation (``She was a synthesis of all the arts, freed of all imperfections . . . I had to share in it!''). Krausser's plotline juxtaposes Cora's deliriously exfoliating, oddly mingled professionalism, skepticism, lust, and moral confusion against the ``progress'' of Nagy's campaign to become human (by assuming such burdens as a job: as the magician Bagarozy), and thus eventually be ``Dead and with Maria.'' It all climaxes with a wonderful renunciation scene (being human, it seems, isn't all that attractive) and a smashing conclusion that ironically fulfills Cora's, ``the Devil's,'' and even Robert''s expectations and fantasies alike. A brilliant work. Let's have more of Krausser's fiction, please. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Helmut Krausser is a novelist, poet, diarist, dramaturge, composer, and screenwriter. He was born in 1964 in Esslingen. He now lives in Berlin. At various times he has worked as a night watchman, newspaper canvasser, opera extra, vocalist in a rock 'n' roll band, and journalist. He has a degree in Roman archaeology. His novels Der groBe Bagarozy (The Great Bagarozy) and Fette Welt (Fat World) have been adapted for the screen starring Jürgen Vogel. He is also the author of UC (2003) Die wilden Hunde von Pompeji (The Wild Dogs of Pompeii, 2004) and “Strom” (Stream, 2004). Used Book in Good Condition