A probing masterpiece-in-miniature of self-reflection and cultural reckoning.
Literary Hub • Best Book Covers of October 2024
From “the great German-language writer of his generation” (Joshua Cohen) comes the second novel of Christian Kracht’s career narrated by an eponymous “Christian” (the first was his bestselling debut, Faserland). Eurotrash begins in Zurich, where Christian has returned to care for his eighty-year-old mother after her discharge from a psychiatric institution. Confronting the dark shadows of his family’s past—particularly his grandfather’s strong ties with the Nazi regime—and struggling to navigate the emotionally wrenching terrain of his relationship with his mother, he sets off on a road trip with her. As they traverse Switzerland together in a hired cab, mother and son attempt to give away her vast fortune, stuffed in a large plastic bag, to random strangers.
By turns disturbing, disorienting, hilarious, and poignant, and brilliantly rendered in English by prize-winning translator Daniel Bowles, Eurotrash tells an intensely personal and unsparingly critical story of contemporary culture; a story that shows us a writer at the pinnacle of his powers of insight and observation.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Literary Hub • Best Book Covers of October 2024
From “the great German-language writer of his generation” (Joshua Cohen) comes the second novel of Christian Kracht’s career narrated by an eponymous “Christian” (the first was his bestselling debut, Faserland). Eurotrash begins in Zurich, where Christian has returned to care for his eighty-year-old mother after her discharge from a psychiatric institution. Confronting the dark shadows of his family’s past—particularly his grandfather’s strong ties with the Nazi regime—and struggling to navigate the emotionally wrenching terrain of his relationship with his mother, he sets off on a road trip with her. As they traverse Switzerland together in a hired cab, mother and son attempt to give away her vast fortune, stuffed in a large plastic bag, to random strangers.
By turns disturbing, disorienting, hilarious, and poignant, and brilliantly rendered in English by prize-winning translator Daniel Bowles, Eurotrash tells an intensely personal and unsparingly critical story of contemporary culture; a story that shows us a writer at the pinnacle of his powers of insight and observation.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Whether he's fictionalizing history in order to question the validity of history or fictionalizing himself in order to question the validity of self, it is by now apparent to me and to his many readers that Christian Kracht is the great German-language writer of his generation." - Joshua Cohen
"Christian Kracht is a master of beautifully constructed sentences, the elegance of which conceals dread. His novels are about Germany, about ghosts, about war and delusion and every conceivable horror, but they are also full of melancholy comedy, and they all contain a hidden secret that you never quite get to the bottom of." - Daniel Kehlmann
"Christian Kracht began his storied career as Germanic literature's late-capitalist enfant terrible, then somehow-stealthily, almost magically-transformed himself into its conscience. Eurotrash is Thomas Bernhard's Extinction with a sense of humor." - John Wray
"There's a refreshing bright moral clarity to Christian Kracht's Eurotrash. Less than eighty years ago, grandpa was enslaving people to death. So when you learn that your share is 14 million Swiss Francs, how do you make it right?" - Nell Zink
"Christian Kracht is a master of beautifully constructed sentences, the elegance of which conceals dread. His novels are about Germany, about ghosts, about war and delusion and every conceivable horror, but they are also full of melancholy comedy, and they all contain a hidden secret that you never quite get to the bottom of." - Daniel Kehlmann
"Christian Kracht began his storied career as Germanic literature's late-capitalist enfant terrible, then somehow-stealthily, almost magically-transformed himself into its conscience. Eurotrash is Thomas Bernhard's Extinction with a sense of humor." - John Wray
"There's a refreshing bright moral clarity to Christian Kracht's Eurotrash. Less than eighty years ago, grandpa was enslaving people to death. So when you learn that your share is 14 million Swiss Francs, how do you make it right?" - Nell Zink
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