Axel Brauns Buntschatten und Fledermäuse (Coloured Shadows and Bats) Hoffmann und Campe, February 2002. 400 pp. ISBN 3-455-09353-1 This highly unusual, engaging and thought-provoking autobiography documents the journey of a young boy, Axel, from the safe autistic background of his early childhood in Hamburg into a world in which he must communicate with others whose lifestyle is unfamiliar, frightening or, quite often, simply meaningless. This other world is made up of black bats and colourshadows, the former tormenting him, in kindergarten for instance, the latter representing his family and friends. Autism was discovered in 1947 yet Axel, growing up in the 1960s, received little support or understanding even from his family. 'Life in autism', he writes, 'is a miserable preparation for life in a world without autism. Polite etiquette has set out plenty of banana-skins for us to slip-up on. Autistic people are masters in not avoiding a single one'. But Axel's world is full of wonder: The grains of sand on the beach glitter rainbow-coloured in the light, the repetitive action of twirling a stool provides its own reward. It is also a world in which grief and joy have no place. His father dies and he feels no sadness; he tries, but unsuccessfully, to learn to share his mother's grief. Indeed all the typical characteristics of autism are portrayed here: the obsession with order and pattern, the need to learn by rote, the repetition of what others say, the social ineptness, the inability to distinguish animate from inanimate objects or to recognise shadowy faces and emotions of others. But beyond the portrayal of an often misunderstood condition there is another dimension to this book that lifts it quite out the ordinary: the reader is forced, by the process of understanding Axel's strange language, to re-enact a distorted form of communication that mirrors his own. With unobtrusive skill he turns the tables on his readers, who find themselves locked in a struggle to leave behind their fixed - and so obviously inadequate - interpretations. Axel Brauns is a major new talent. He has created a world which one ends up reluctant to leave.