The Pigeon by German writer Patrick Süskind is a short novel (115 pages) that punches above its weight. In the style of Thomas Bernhard (but with paragraph and typographical breaks), it tells the story of a middle aged man set in his routines whose life is upended by the appearance of a pigeon in the corridor outside his apartment door. This one seemingly small but odd event sends him into a spiral that makes him question everything he's ever known. Süskind effectively shows that the veneer of civilization, and the mental layer that protects an individual's sanity, is very thin.
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