Frederick Reuss

Frederick Reuss is an American writer and author of six seriocomic novels, including his debut, Horace Afoot (1997), which was named a New York Times Notable Book. Reuss' writing has been called "cosmopolitan, contemplative, contemporary prose." All of his novels explore the question of whether modern personal identity is still inviolable and, if so, how it is affected by external, cultural forces. He is best known for Mohr (2006), a highly regarded work of speculative fiction based on a collection of letters, papers, and vintage family photographs owned by the playwright Max Mohr (1891–1937), a German-Jewish physician who exiled himself to Shanghai in the early 1930s as the Nazis were coming to power in Germany. On reading Mohr, art critic John Berger remarked that Reuss' "aerialist's sense of history, his sleight of hand, his animal knowledge of political practice, his silver tact and his cool tenderness make his performance nothing less than Orphic."