Victory

Axel Heyst's father died leaving him four words of advice: look on, make no sound. So Heyst drifts through the Malay Archipelago touching nothing and nobody, courteous, weightless, absent from his own life, until he hears a girl scraping a violin in a travelling ladies' orchestra and carries her off to an abandoned coal island where no one else lives. Then a boat comes out of the empty sea with three men in it: a spectral gentleman who introduces himself as the world come to pay a visit, a secretary who moves like a cat, and something hairy that walks on its knuckles. The dread builds so slowly you can hear it. A man who arranged his whole existence so that nothing could ever be taken from him has finally acquired something to lose, and that is the precise moment the world learns his address. By the end you will be begging him to trust somebody.