This page-turning literary suspense novel, set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, is a scrupulously researched and gorgeously visual first novel from a highly original writer.Wall Street JournalThe Fig Eater, a first novel by Jody Shields, takes readers, with mesmerizing clarity, to Vienna in 1911...through overlapping perspectives, Ms. Shields flashes dazzling stereopticon slides of a city floating between opposites...Ms. Shields has a powerful gift for poetic and painterly imagery. Her startling scenes, rich in metaphor, linger long in memory.