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Review

Fail Worse: Discover a better, more meta, Berlin

This slim, clever novel from Habib William Kherbek is a masterful piece of Berlin-based autofictional satire.

Photo: IMAGO / Jürgen Ritter

In Habib William Kherbek’s brilliant latest novel, a totally fictional character named HWK – who also happens to be a musician/critic/novelist transplanted from Berlin to London – is trying to write autofiction. Well, he is thinking about making notes about his autofiction. From the first page, HWK’s voice is gripping – and hilarious. We follow him as he rides his bike around, sits in cafés, browses bookstores, considers art, indulges in memory and dreams of success while navigating day jobs and injuries.

He also reflects on the possibilities – and dreary calcified tropes – of a genre often caught in “a dialogue between narcissism and solipsism”. Gradually, ironic metacommentary gives way to something resembling genuine subjectivity, perhaps even vulnerability. Through HWK’s everyday adventures and obsessions, Kherbek brings new depth to contemporary autofiction’s trademark features: its slippage between thinking and doing, its hammy deployment of coincidence, its disputed reality status, and its unavoidable relationship with the author’s personal brand.

By the end, this slim novel is raucously weird and unforgettably clever. As in all good satires, Kherbek’s wild humour is underwritten by genuine commitment to its target. L’autofiction est morte, vive l’autofiction!