Fiction – paperback; Peirene Press; 172 pages; 2016. Translated from the Austrian German by Jamie Bulloch.
Linda Stift’s The Empress and the Cake is part of Peirene Press’ Fairy Tale Series. It’s an eccentric and twisted tale, first published under the German-language title Stierhunger in 2007, that retells the story of Empress Elisabeth of Austria’s obsession with keeping slim. Or at least I think that’s what it’s doing.
This is an odd story, a multi-layered story, a story that isn’t all that it seems. But the one abiding theme is appetite. How do we feed it, how do we control it, how does it control us?
When the story opens a young women is tempted by a cake in a pastry shop. The cake, which is known as Gugelhupf, is offered to her by an old lady, Frau Hohenemb, a stranger whom she meets on the street who has carefully noted the scars on her knuckles. (Scarred knuckles are a sign of bulimia, caused by putting your hand in your mouth to make you gag.)
The young woman, who narrates the story, then accepts an invitation to go back to Frau Hohenemb’s house to eat the cake with a cup of tea. From thereon in, the young woman becomes trapped in a kind of interdependent relationship with the old lady who may, or may not, be Empress Sissi herself. Yes, I told you it was a bit bonkers.
Over the course of this short novel (it’s just 172 pages long), the young woman gets caught up in a whole bunch of strange activities involving Frau Hohenemb and her housekeeper, Ida, including blowing up a statue of the Empress, visiting a sex museum and stealing a royal cocaine syringe on public display. Along the way the narrator’s past life as a bulimic is retriggered and she enters a new pattern of gorging and purging on food.
The Empress and the Cake is a grotesque sort of horror story that shows how the slow erosion of willpower can be detrimental to wellbeing. It also highlights the idea that control and power can come from unusual and unexpected sources. Greed, addiction and cruelty are all themes underpinning the central storyline. I read it with a mixture of fascination and abhorrence. Do try it if you are looking for something utterly different to anything you’ve read before.
Reading Matters 
This does sound bonkers, but in a thought-provoking way! I really like Peirene so I’ll look out for this.
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I have all the Peirene books but have only read about 8 of them; I need to read more.
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Well, this sounds good! I actually have this as I won a competition over on Poppy Peacock’s blog and got a years subscription to Peirene. This could be a good one for after the summer!
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Yes, I really liked this one… strange but also utterly beguiling.
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This does sound like my kind of book. I may be tempted.
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It made me want to find out more about the Empress… it seems she lead a rather sad and troubled life, obsessed with keeping thin and brushing her hair!
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Not for me, I think!
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Ah, you might like this one, Lisa… it’s not gruesome at all, just a bit crazy. As I said to Jonathan above, it’s made me want to find out more about the real Empress. I didn’t know anything about her. She sounds like quite a tortured but intriguing soul. The book assumes a level of knowledge I don’t possess, but it can still be read as a rather crazy romp without understanding the complex back story.
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Hmm, *chuckle* still not feeling very tempted. (And just as well, given how many books I have on my TBR).
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Hehehe… I know what you mean about the TBR.
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Not for me, either, but I do love how there are presses out there publishing weird and peculiar stuff!
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It’s written in quite a brilliant way, Liz — almost stream of consciousness style with no indication of who is speaking so you have to figure out a lot of it yourself. I really love books that do that. It’s beautifully translated by Jamie Bulloch, too; I assume it wasn’t an easy book to translate.
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I like weird, so this one intrigues me. A royal cocaine syringe?
I never really thought about women in the past having eating disorders, but of course they did!
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Yes, it’s not something that’s ever crossed my mind either, Naomi. But apparently Sissi was obsessed and was renowned for her ultra-thin waistline. At one point it was 16 inches in circumference! According to Wikipedia she maintained a weight of around 50 kg (110 pounds, 7 st 12 lbs) for most of her adult life — she was 5ft 8in, so quite tall. (I’m an inch shorter than that and at least 20kg heavier!)
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Wow. Imagine how hard it would have been to keep that.
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