This barbed account of failed idealism shines a bright light on the ravages of obsession, all the while sprinkling the trail with memorably bizarre details.”—Henry Alford, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)Imperium is astonishing and captivating, a tongue-in-cheek Conradian literary adventure for our time.” —Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle Imperium is a Melvillean masterpiece of the South Seas....A strange, Mephistophelian novel, Kracht's book is also, by several units of some arcane nautical measurement, one of the slyest and most original works of the last several years. And - thanks to Daniel Bowles - it's one of the best translated.”—Jonathon Sturgeon, Flavorwire Publishers Weekly Biographile World Literature Today Imperium is a short novel, but its sweep is considerable. While Engelhardt's case history may be singular, Kracht places it in the context of an approaching global convulsion - World War I - that wipes out sanity, order, convention and pragmatism as thoroughly as it does Engelhardt's delusions....It's a credit to Daniel Bowles that, as you make your way through the novel's perverse extravagances, you always feel you're reading an original maverick stylist, never a translation.”—Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times Imperium would be like engraving Goethe's Conversations of German Refugees into an orange seed. Or perhaps into a coconut? The cocovore on his South Sea isle would consume it at some point, and then the writing would be gone. But then shadowy mountains of fate would still form in the background: the German history behind the dropouts who made it by escaping it, when the evil procession of fate halted for a moment. An adventure novel. No doubt. That there even is still such a thing.”—Elfriede Jelinek, author of The Piano Teacher and Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Library Journal Publishers Weekly Imperium is, first and foremost, one thing—marvelous literature.” —Erhard Schütz, Der Freitag
…[a] very amusing and bracingly oddball novel…By wedding a gimlet-eyed satire of historical faddism to a highly jaunty prose style, Imperium brings to mind the early work of T. Coraghessan Boyle…this barbed account of failed idealism shines a bright light on the ravages of obsession, all the while sprinkling the trail with memorably bizarre details.
The New York Times Book Review - Henry Alford
★ 04/27/2015
★ 07/01/2015
2015-04-15
