Penpusher magazine preview of Dr Ragab

I've just Twigged... Just finished reading a preview copy of Robert Twigger's first novel (he of Angry White Pyjamas fame). It's called: Dr Ragab's Universal Language. Fantastic read and I urge you to purchase it when it comes out in early July. We learn about the novel's key character Hertwig through his diary, which has been passed to the narrator of the novel via a deathly boring business-to-business writing job: in Germany to write the company history of an aluminium corporation, he is given the diaries by Hertwig's nephew who says little but clearly wants his uncle's story to be told. When we first meet Hertwig he is underground, a prisoner of his own making... that is, he is being held captive in a bunker he himself built to protect a young Jewish girl, Hagar, during the Second World War. It is here, alone and initially in complete darkness that he begins to remember the teaching of Dr Ragab and to truly understand them. The narrative of memory that then follows traces back to Hertwig's unconventional, staunchly  atheist father, his brief time at a monastery, and his involvement and then injury in the war. But the story really gets under way when he meets Dr Ragab, a mysterious and famed figure in 1920's Cairo who some worship and others dismiss as a fraud.  Hertwig becomes his pupil and is put through an endless series of seemingly meaningless tasks, but trapped alone and hopeless in the bunker he realises that to escape he needs to remember the teachings of Ragab... his mysterious (& magical?) Universal Language. Intertwined with the pages of the diary, the modern-day narrator who is reading all breaks off every so often to tells us about his own life... his infatuation with a girl and the attentions she is receiving from a slimy City businessman. This potentially awkward structure is dealt with with a great lightness of touch, and the whole novel is very deftly written as well as being humourous throughout. One of it's key themes is the idea of being present, not living either in the past or the future, and that to do this you must release both fear and greed. The idea that these two emotions are manifestations of the same basic emotion was very interesting to me. & we've all experienced it: working busily away at something, our ambition and desire (greed you might say) for respect and success disturbs our ability to achieve our potentials as we imagine winning the prize, making the money, receiving the applauseof the crowd, before our task is even close to being completed. And ultimately we take our focus away from what we're trying to do, and both our ambition and our selves suffer... As Dr Ragab said: 'A man on a straight path never lost his way.' Those who can exist without greed or fear are very rare souls, Dr Ragab informs Hertwig... they are luminous souls, like Hagar. The question is, can Hertwig release himself from his own memory and fear to escape the fortress-like bunker he built with his own hands?  To find out, you'd best read the novel...  PP xx