Man in the Corner

Can you become someone else without the world noticing?

When David’s wife confesses that she was once a prostitute, the revelation doesn’t disturb him - he considers it simply an error of youth. But the following night David collapses from a rare brain disease and within a few months his world is turned upside down.

It was a perfectly acceptable life – successful business, happy marriage, two children. Why then has David involved himself in an identity-theft crime worth millions of dollars? Why is he taking instructions from the oddly eloquent, handsome criminal, Ben Strbic? David can’t quite understand the sequence of events that has led him here, only that he must continue to the very end.

As the days and months progress, a scam that was meant to be straightforward becomes a perilous mystery unfolding in David’s very own life.

We are led up shabby and menacing lanes and into rundown apartment buildings. Besser is in command of both the cerebral and scenic elements of his demanding story. The disarming but troubling last words of Man in the Corner are Leah’s: “There is nothing else to say.” In this daring debut, Besser makes us doubt any such confident, or knowingly misleading assertions.
THE AUSTRALIAN