Josef Haslinger Das Vaterspiel (The Generation Game) S.Fischer Verlag, August 2000, 575 pp. ISBN 3-10-030054-8 Among the nastier entertainments invented for the internet, the one devised by Rupert Kramer (nicknamed Ratz because of his rat-like face) must surely rank pretty high. It is a computer game which involves more and more unpleasant ways of killing his father, Helmut Kramer, until recently Austria's Transport Minister. Other players, of course, can substitute their own fathers, but Rupert is spurred on by the overbearing character of his, a man who started out in the 1960s as an idealistic socialist, worked his way up the political system, before becoming greedy and corrupt, then cheating on his wife, not to mention the tax authorities. Rupert's first response was to drop out, get into drugs and alcohol, but now at thirty-five he has worked through all that to achieve success in his own right. His sister, meanwhile, has become a militant political activist, demonstrating against road-building projects in the countryside and - to annoy her socialist parent - consorting with the likes of Jörg Haider. As the book starts Ratz is en route to America to help an old girlfriend, Mimi, make alterations to her grandmother's house on Long Island. What he doesn't realise until he arrives is the real purpose of this work, which is to provide a hiding place for the girl's great-uncle Lucas, a man implicated in horrific Nazi war crimes in Lithuania. To his surprise he finds himself growing to understand, and even to like talking to, this elderly and disabled supposed criminal. This is a complex and enigmatic book, part political thriller, part exploration of father/child relationships, with flashbacks to the war and to Rupert's and Mimi's very different family backgrounds, and with more than one father involved. Helmut's own father, once a prisoner in Dachau, is disgusted by his son's venality. His father-in-law, a small-town conservative industrialist, simply hates him as a 'red'. When Ratz does indeed succeed in causing his father's death, through an immensely cruel twist, we are left in no doubt how grim the 'game' can be.