Deformed like his father by a hare lip, embryologist Dr Victor Hoppe wants to beat God at his own game. An abrupt departure from the University of Aachen returns him to his childhood village, Wolfheim, close to the border of Belgium, Germany and Holland. Local gossips start to wonder: Is the doctor evil or will he preserve life? Where is his wife and the mother of his triplets? And why are these triplets – whom he brought to the village with him – named after the archangels Gabriel, Michael and Raphael?

Gradually, Dr Hoppe wins the villagers’ trust. They start visiting him, intrigued by the children, now revealed to be ill and hare-lipped themselves. The villagers fabricate all manner of ailments to sneak a peek at the freaks in the surgery. One, retired matriarch Frau Maenhout, endeavours to teach the children a little love… This is when Brijs works shards of past into the narrative. We learn about Dr Hoppe’s lonely upbringing in a convent-run orphanage, shunned as the devil incarnate; about his fierce ambition; and about the origins of his increasingly neglected children.

Science and religion paw at each other in this novel. Like Jesus, Dr Hoppe feels forsaken. He hates God for forsaking Jesus – and there begins his battle with the Creator. Brijs’s haunting gothic is jammed with viscerality. Embryos float in formaldehyde. Reproductive organs splay and contract. The translation from Dutch, however, can be a bit plodding – too much explanation at the expense of good writing. Yet twisted into its heart is a poignant paradox: sociopath Victor, so frigid in human relationships, believes he is working towards the best in humanity.

Anita Pati