Wow, what can I say? SHORT CIRCUIT defies any conventional description in existence today. There isn’t a category that it fits into. However, what I can say with total certainty is that the inspiration for the plot grew from M.C. Escher’s art. If you’re familiar with Escher, you’ll know that he deals in optical illusions. Here, Wolf Haas has imagined a literary illusion, and Jamie Bulloch has cleverly translated it for English readers.
 
We tune in when Franz Escher is waiting for an electrician to show up at his apartment to fix an outlet in his kitchen. To pass the time until the technician gets there, Escher opens a book and starts to read. The story is about Elio Russo, who’s in the witness protection program and on the run from dangerous mafia types. Because he has trouble sleeping, he often tries reading to make himself drowsy. He’s reading about a fellow named Franz Escher, who is waiting for an electrician to arrive at his apartment. Their stories intertwine like that and go round and round until ultimately the lines separating them blur.

"Reading this mind-bending novel will take you down a path that leads back to where you began, and I can almost guarantee that you won’t know where you went. It's truly mystifying. But it’s fun."

At one point, it dawns on Escher what might be happening. Still unsure, though, he contacts his old friend, Nellie, and asks her to help him with a problem. He teeters on the edge of confessing everything but pulls back at the last minute. Escher can’t decide if he actually wants Nellie’s help, but he can use the diversion until he figures out what to do. He prefers 1,000-piece puzzles, so he invites Nellie in. They argue over which to choose and ultimately pour all the pieces on the floor so they can get to work. It becomes clear that they had some sort of relationship in the past, and at least one of them may want to strike it up again, but that part remains fuzzy. And now Escher has this trouble with the electrician. 
 
In the meantime, the man in the book that Escher is reading about has changed his name, for protection, to Marko Steiner and moved to yet another city. As his story advances, Steiner finds himself falling in love, which is inconvenient at best for a man in the witness protection program. It is, in fact, what sets his downfall in motion. As Steiner descends into great peril, Escher becomes increasingly alarmed, feeling helpless yet obliged to somehow put things right. But how can he possibly help a character in a book?
 
Reading this mind-bending novel will take you down a path that leads back to where you began, and I can almost guarantee that you won’t know where you went. It's truly mystifying. But it’s fun. Even Jamie Bulloch says that if paragraphs went by without a smile, he had to go back and rethink them. So SHORT CIRCUIT reader, prepare to be perplexed (at the very least) and amused. You will never be able to approach a book in the same way again.