The Island of Second Sight

A dazzling, hallucinatory journey through exile, absurdity, and survival in pre-war Europe. "One of the greatest books of the twentieth century" (Thomas Mann)

Fleeing the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany, Albert Vigoleis and his wife Beatrice escape to the Spanish island of Mallorca-only to find themselves entangled in a surreal web of political intrigue, poverty, and philosophical absurdity.

What begins as a retreat from tyranny becomes a kaleidoscopic adventure through the margins of history, as the couple navigates Francoist persecution, Nazi spies, and the eccentricities of island life.

Originally published in German in 1953 and hailed as a lost masterpiece, The Island of Second Sight is a sprawling, erudite, and darkly comic novel that blends autobiography with fiction, satire with metaphysics.

Often compared to Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities, Thelen's magnum opus is a literary odyssey of exile, identity, and the search for meaning in a world gone mad.