The Keep

In the wilds of Eastern Europe, the castle has stood for hundreds of years, steeped in blood lore and family pride. Thirty-six-year-old Danny, a damaged, cynical New Yorker arrives one night to help his mysterious cousin transform the place into a luxury hotel.

Deprived of his mobile phone and email access, starved of contact with the outside world, Danny finds is very hard to adjust. The crumbling stone walls and black nights feel a world away from the well-trodden streets of Manhattan, and cousin Howie is just as alien to him.

And then things start getting really weird. A sinister old baroness, a tragic accident in a fathomless pool, a treacherous underground labyrinth – as terror overwhelms Danny, he discovers that ‘reality’ may be something he can no longer afford to believe in…

Jennifer Egan

is the author of Look at Me, which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, The Invisible Circus and the story collection Emerald City. Her non-fiction appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.

Jennifer Egan's q & a

What sparked The Keep?
In 2001, I made a touristic visit to the ruined castle of Godfrey de Bouillon (leader of the First Crusade), in southern Belgium. The castle was dank, lugubrious, and had a small, ill-lit stone room full of instruments of torture. I was bizarrely elated. I thought maybe I wanted to write a novel set in Medieval times, but no, the feeling was too nostalgic, too exaggerated--too, well, 'cheesy' to point in the direction of a historical novel. Thus began my love affair with the gothic genre.


Where and when is the novel set?
Much of the novel takes place in a castle somewhere in the area of Austria/Germany/theCzech Republic. The castle owner himself isn't sure which, because, as he puts it, 'Those borders are constantly sliding around.' Another part takes place in a high security American prison, region unspecified. The time is the present. But really, the novel is out of time and space; its gothic landscape is purely imaginary, with a literary history ranging from Ann Radcliffe to the ludicrous American 1970's soap opera, Dark Shadows.

Do you have a favourite character in the novel?
Well, I'm still pretty attached to my feckless technophile who finds himself isolated and disconnected in the castle after he knocks his satellite dish into an overgrown, stinky, and long-abandoned swimming pool.

What's your favourite children's book and why?
What I remember loving most from my own childhood are the Laura Ingals Wilder books. But what I've most enjoyed as an adult, reading aloud to my sons, is Roald Dahl's BFG.