
In this bracingly funny and bizarre novel, a writer who just so happens to also be named Christian Kracht picks up his ailing 80-year-old mother (freshly released from her latest stay in a mental institution, and subsisting on a steady diet of white wine, vodka and barbiturates) from her home in Zurich and strikes off on a rollicking trip across Switzerland.
Before leaving, Kracht’s mother pulls millions of francs from her investment accounts, split between stocks of German weapons maker Rheinmetall and a Swiss dairy conglomerate. Kracht seeks out a vegan commune in the mountains, hoping to give away the ill-gotten fortune, only to discover the cultists are followers of the notorious crackpot physician and antisemitic conspiracy theorist Ryke Geerd Hamer: a typical twist in this sordid but darkly charming satire, in which the grisly underside of the European upper crust haunts the pair but never drags them down.
The novel can be read as a sequel to Christian Kracht’s 1995 debut, Faserland, a champagne-soaked classic that exposed the hedonistic, vapid materialism of the continent’s cosmopolitan elite. Faserland has, oddly, never been published in English, which makes Eurotrash a wonderful place to start with this brash, brilliant star of contemporary German literature.
- Out now from Serpent’s Tail
