Clare is a photographer who thinks like a writer. She toys with the sounds of words and sentences, and with the possibilities of syntax and semantics. The liveliness of Clare’s mind is, in places, all that the novel needs to carry itself forward. She is travelling in Eastern Europe to photograph Soviet-era buildings. It is this project that has brought her to the eastern part of Berlin, where she encounters Andi. This photographic form of capture is distant from everyday life in the places it depicts, and finds its parallel in Andi’s own project, which concerns Clare herself.

The book is also about Berlin, a city whose twentieth-century history has marked its citizens. The peculiarities of the city fill the novel’s pages, as does its recent history as a city divided. Thus the novel’s title perfectly encapsulates its uneasy position between the interior life of its characters and the broader sweep of history. Andi’s own life has been bound up with these events, and they have left their mark on him. But he is not always a living presence for the reader in quite the way that Clare is.

Disturbing though it can be, Berlin Syndrome is never gratuitous. The author shows restraint as the true nature of Clare and Andi’s relationship emerges. Apprehensive readers will be rewarded for continuing into the second part of the book. The novel is ambitious for a début, but Joosten is talented enough to fulfil that ambition throughout.