But then he doesn't come home for dinner. And as it gets later and later and the mussel pot remains untouched at the centre of the table, "we intensified the abnormality in whichever way we could". Their lives have long been entirely controlled by a madman, and yet it takes just this minute deviation from the day's expected course to stimulate the beginning of a potential mutiny. Perhaps the regime is not indestructible. Perhaps they will be brave. 

The Mussel Feast has long been a set text in Germany, and deservedly so. Written in 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the novella is a chilling portrait of a tyrannical regime, and an exploration of the unexpected, private ways in which human beings have escaped from repression. This is an extraordinary book, the story unspooled with masterful restraint, and written with simplicity and precision. Vanderbeke is able to animate her characters with just a few quick, clear strokes, and yet the reader cannot help but feel with them — their terror; their fear; their tiny, burgeoning hope.

Throughout history, fathers have served as the near-ubiquitous symbol for absolute rule, whether benign or despotic, religious or political. But as in the best and most affecting allegorical writing, there is a great deal more here than just metaphor. The tale is entirely and unexpectedly free of polemic and is, above all, a real portrait of a marriage and a family. Now translated into English for the first time, The Mussel Feast is published by Peirene, whose relatively new imprint of novellas shows a robust and inspiring belief in the future of the form — and of print publishing in general. Given its place in the contemporary German canon it's surprising that it hasn't been translated until now, but thank goodness Peirene found it. It deserves a place in our jacket pockets.