Excerpt from The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hofmann, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He retrieved an eggcup and placed it on the table. Shaped like a tiny rooster, complete with comb and wattle, it looked like child's pottery. Methodically, he began freeing the egg from its shell, staring into the space above the table, his mind clean and shapeless.

Then something changed. This was an episode. They came on suddenly, and lately more frequently, and dissipated as quickly as they'd come. Epileptic seizure, old age, a sudden loss of blood flow to the brain, all of the above. When it was finished Zeiger surveyed the kitchen. The pot stood where he had placed it, steaming soundlessly on the stove. The coffee cooker, the emptied pouch of Kaffee Mix, the tent of soft light slicing the table and parts of the floor. His hand and a spoonful of egg white hovered in the air.

He had theories about these episodes. One, his brain had reached capacity. At his age, he had seen, absorbed, and forgotten many significant and insignificant things. These things were bound to get mangled; the old with the new, the known with the unknown, the certain with the uncertain. Nothing to worry about, alles in Ordnung. Two, enlightenment. The physicist Johannes Held, his onetime friend, had once told him about hermit monks who emerged from their caves, tattered and emaciated, to see everything as changed. A tree was no longer a tree but a field of energy to which their minds attributed treeness, or so he'd said. Zeiger had not fully grasped that revelation, but in moments like these, he wondered. Three, Lara. Four, death. He was dying and these episodes were the harbingers of a vast emptiness to come.

He placed the spoon back in the rooster. The splashing and gurgling of pipes next door had ceased, and there were no more voices. But there was music; a faint hum, waxing and waning vibrations. He tiptoed to the bedroom. Above the nightstand, next to the hook for his bathrobe, there was a blank spot of wall. He pressed his ear to it and listened. Music. The nasal intonation of a radio set. Metallic keyboard sounds and guitars. The song had a catchy, cheerless aura. A male voice, low and monotonous, was singing words he barely recognized. English; his own personal Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers. Someone, the man sang, who's there. Zeiger detached his ear and stared at the wall. Schreibmüller had tuned in to a Western channel. At this volume, at this hour, right next to his own bed. How many times had Zeiger slept through these things? He pounded the wall, first hesitantly, then with conviction, until it rattled and the nightstand shuddered below. When he stopped, the sound had ceased. Not a whisper, not a floorboard creaking, definitely no music. He tightened his bathrobe, marched back to the kitchen. There he finished his breakfast, staring vacuously at the eggcup and its shameful childlike shape.

It was time. His closet greeted him with the smell of camphor and dust. His suits hung from their hangers like a queue of limp corpses. It was a subtle rainbow of browns and grays, with one black sports coat for functions of consequence such as banquets, funerals, the Youth Consecration ceremonies of the children of comrades he barely remembered.

Ties were an opportunity for self-expression. His collection was likewise a meticulous gradation of browns and grays. Buried underneath them was a tie with a pattern of small beer mugs, some in the process of tipping and spilling their foaming crowns. It was a vulgar tie, hedonistic, self-righteous, Bavarian, one that created in him the same level of discomfort he experienced viewing indecent films. It had been a birthday gift, an attempt at humor, by a secretary whose name he'd had trouble retaining. She had placed the tie on his desk, along with a card. In response, he filed a request to relieve her of her duties, making her the last in a long lineage of secretaries the Ministry had assigned to his one-man department.

He pulled out a dark blue tie with a subtle pattern of vertical stripes in white and wine red. A wide-collared sports coat and creased slacks in charcoal gray would take him from day to night.

Excerpted from The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hofmann. Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer Hofmann. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.