Centroeuropa

Taking a break from my Italianate fixation, I read Vicente Luis Mora's Centroeuropa.  A man arrives at a farm in Prussia with the corpse of his dead wife. He digs a hole to bury her and unearths the corpse of a frozen soldier... This takes place in the first decades of the 19th century.  

That is the first page or so. Everything else is the gradual revelation of everything else surrounding these events, in past, present, and future. So many novels leave no room for mystery: everything is on the surface. This one does the opposite, and revelations only lead to a deeper sense of mystery. 

I knew Vicente as a critic of poetry, whose book Singularidades is obligatory reading. I've met him in person, I seem to remember, and also am friends with him on face book.