A young man is found unconscious in a park in London. He has no injuries, no illnesses. Weeks later, the doctors still can't explain why he hasn't regained consciousness. A detective, a homeless man and a writer try to find answers to the questions surrounding him. A widely traveled elderly man is working on his memoirs. He had left home at the age of nineteen. The decades that followed were dominated by his determination to overcome professional and personal adversities. About half way through the book, the young man and the elderly man meet under extraordinary circumstances - they "collide", may be a better word - and seemingly unanswerable questions emerge. One man's search for answers takes him around half the globe to Western Australia. The Mysterious Man is a major novel that encompasses three genres: literary fiction, mystery and memoirs.
About the Author: Fred Schäfer was born in the south of Germany and left home at the age of nineteen. A few years later he discovered the world of literature. He was drawn towards living a bohemian life, like Henry Miller, and writing novels, like Ernest Hemingway. But he also wanted to be faithful and had ideals and values that were not entirely in line with the lives of his heroes. Two of his books, The Short and Wonderful Life of Henry Hemingway and Travelling with Maria, provide insight into those years of his life. The Mysterious Man completes the picture, although not entirely, because this book is a novel, not an autobiography. Or is it both? A book in which reality and fiction merge? It is called The Mysterious Man for more than one reason. At the age of thirty six, the author and his family moved to Australia, where they still reside. He worked as an engineer and IT manager. He became a professional speaker and made himself a name as the presenter of personal development seminars. During those years, he wrote two nonfiction books: The Solution Within Yourself and Success, Money and You. A few years later he published the essence of his seminars in his third nonfiction book, How to Make Great Things Happen in YOUR LIFE. More than anything else, this is a book about how to deal with adversity. Fred Schäfer's heart belongs to the world of literature, which to him means fiction. Writing books like Ernest Hemingway, something he wasn't able to do in his early twenties, he attempted again a few decades later. This time in a more serious and professional manner. He wrote eight novels, three in German and five in English. His English novels are: An Almighty Conspiracy The Invention of the Big Bang The 92-Year-Old Lady Who Made Me Steal a Dead Man's Car The Mysterious Man Don't Mention the FBI The 92-Year-Old Lady Who Made Me Steal a Dead Man's Car, clearly, is Fred Schäfer's most fictional literary fiction novel. As the subtitle of the book says, this is a thrilling and seriously funny novel. The author demonstrates his imaginative power to an almost unimaginable degree. Literary characters from the books of his heroes come alive and attempt something, which would make their authors, if they knew about it, scream in horror or rotate in their graves.