A Posthumous Confession is narrated by Termeer, a deeply frustrated man who persuades himself that only in murder can he find ultimate satisfaction. Emotionally stunted, thanks to his
upbringing by forbidding and condemning parents—they never miss a chance to remind him that he is a worthless mediocrity—Termeer is rapidly living up to their low expectations when, to his own
and others’ astonishment, he successfully woos a beautiful and gifted woman. But instead of finding happiness in his marriage, he discovers it to be a new source of self-hatred, hatred that he
directs at his innocent wife and child. And when he becomes caught up in an affair with a woman as demanding as his own self-loathing, Termeer murders his wife.
What is the self? What makes it go permanently, murderously wrong? Marcellus Emants’s lacerating exploration of this age-old tragic question looks backward to Dostoyevsky and forward to
Simenon, and beyond that to the memoirs of our own day.
