The universality of Krasznahorkai’s vision rivals that of Gogol’s Dead Souls and far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing.

W. G. Sebald

The National Book Award winner’s breathtaking new novel about neo-Nazis, particle physics, and Johann Sebastian Bach

Available Sep, 03 2024

Herscht 07769

Fiction by László Krasznahorkai

Translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet

The gentle giant Florian Herscht has a problem: having faithfully attended Herr Köhler’s adult education classes in physics, he is convinced that disaster is imminent. And so he embarks upon a one-sided correspondence with Chancellor Angela Merkel, to convince her of the danger of the complete destruction of all physical matter. Florian works for the Boss (the head of a local neo-Nazi gang), who has taken him under his wing and gotten him work as a graffiti cleaner in the small eastern German town of Kana. The Boss is enraged by a graffiti artist who is defacing the various monuments to Johann Sebastian Bach in Thuringia with wolf emblems. A Bach fanatic and director of an amateur orchestra, the Boss is determined to catch the culprit with the help of his gang. Florian has no choice but to join the chase. Havoc ensues when real wolves are sighted in the area . . . Written in one cascading sentence with the power of atomic particles colliding, Krasznahorkai’s novel is a tour de force, a morality play, a blistering satire, a hilarious and devastating encapsulation of our helplessness at the moral and environmental dilemmas we face today.

Paperback(published Sep, 03 2024)

ISBN
9780811231534
Price US
18.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
512

Ebook(published Sep, 03 2024)

ISBN
9780811231541

The universality of Krasznahorkai’s vision rivals that of Gogol’s Dead Souls and far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing.

W. G. Sebald

The contemporary Hungarian master of the apocalypse.

Susan Sontag

One of the most profoundly unsettling experiences I have had as a reader.

James Wood, The New Yorker