Imperium

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

On 07.01.2015 22:44, James Kyllo wrote:

> English version not out until July it appears though..

Out now!

 > After a long and remarkably fruitful translation process, Farrar, 
Straus and Giroux of New York finally publishes "Imperium US Edition 
<https://www.facebook.com/Imperiumnovel>. A Fiction of the South Seas" 
in English, available as of now. This is Christian Kracht`s very first 
English language translation.<

Kracht will discuss his novel in Los Angeles on Tuesday (7/14):

19:30 (PDT)

Skylight Books
1818 N Vermont Ave, Los Angeles 90027

Skylight Books, publishers Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the 
Goethe-Institut of Los Angeles and the consulate of Switzerland present 
Christian Kracht discussing his book "Imperium: A Fiction of the South 
Seas".

https://www.facebook.com/mr.christiankracht?fref=nf

>
> On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 11:18 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen 
> <lorentzen at hotmail.de <mailto:lorentzen at hotmail.de>> wrote:
>
>
>     Check this shit out! I've read it four times so far.
>     Definitely the straight dope --
>
>     Kracht is influenced by Pynchon. In "Ich werde hier sein im
>     Sonnenschein und im Schatten", his third novel from 2008 which is
>     alternate history and imagines Lenin wasn't allowed to return to
>     Russia and thus made the revolution in Switzerland which then
>     became the globally acting Swiss Soviet Republic,
>     the protagonist is an high rank soldier with African roots who in
>     the end leads his people back to the African countryside. The
>     inspiration by Enzian from "Gravity's Rainbow" is here obvious.
>     "Imperium" now not only covers the time span of "Against the Day"
>     but also samples genres the way Pynchon did there, as the Kracht
>     scholar Johannes Birgfeld (Südseephantasien. Christian Krachts
>     "Imperium" und sein Beitrag zur Poetik des deutschsprachigen
>     Romans der Gegenwart, in: Wirkendes Wort 62, 2012, Heft 3, pp.
>     457-477) pointed out. Presenting a personal observation, I can add
>     that Kracht learned from Pynchon how to write good slapstick scenes.
>
>     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
>       Imperium
>
>
>         A Fiction of the South Seas
>
>     Christian Kracht; Translated from the German by Daniel Bowles
>
>     Farrar, Straus and Giroux
>
>      *
>         Imperium
>         <http://images.macmillan.com/folio-assets/macmillan_us_frontbookcovers_1000H/9780374175245.jpg>
>         <http://images.macmillan.com/folio-assets/macmillan_us_frontbookcovers_1000H/9780374175245.jpg>
>
>
>     *An outrageous, fantastical, uncategorizable novel of obsession,
>     adventure, and coconuts
>
>     *In 1902, a radical vegetarian and nudist from Nuremberg named
>     August Engelhardt set sail for what was then called the Bismarck
>     Archipelago. His destination: the island Kabakon. His goal: to
>     found a colony based on worship of the sun and coconuts. His
>     malnourished body was found on the beach on Kabakon in 1919; he
>     was forty-three years old.
>          Christian Kracht’s /Imperium/ uses the outlandish details of
>     Engelhardt’s life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism
>     and its fundamental foolishness. Engelhardt is at once a
>     sympathetic outsider—mocked, misunderstood, physically
>     assaulted—and a rigid ideologue, and his misguided notions of
>     purity and his spiral into madness presage the horrors of the
>     mid-twentieth century.
>          Playing with the tropes of classic adventure tales like
>     /Treasure Island/ and /Robinson Crusoe/, Kracht’s novel, an
>     international bestseller, is funny, bizarre, shocking, and
>     poignant—sometimes all on the same page. His allusions are
>     misleading, his historical time lines are twisted, his narrator is
>     unreliable—and the result is a novel that is also a mirror cabinet
>     and a maze pitted with trapdoors. Both a provocative satire and a
>     serious meditation on the fragility and audacity of human
>     activity, /Imperium/ is impossible to categorize, and utterly
>     unlike anything you’ve read before.
>
>     http://us.macmillan.com/imperium/christiankracht
>
>     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>     "Unter den langen weißen Wolken, unter der prächtigen Sonne, unter
>     dem hellen Firnament, da war erst ein langgedehntes Tuten zu
>     hören, dann rief die Schiffsglocke eindringlich zum Mittag, und
>     ein malayischer Boy schritt sanftfüßig und leise das Oberdeck ab,
>     um jene Passagiere mit behutsamem Schulterdruck aufzuwecken, die
>     gleich nach dem üppigen Frühstück wieder eingeschlafen waren. Der
>     norddeutsche Lloyd, Gott verfluche ihn, sorgte jeden Morgen,
>     reiste man denn in der ersten Klasse ..."
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> http://www.last.fm/user/Auto_Da_Fe
> http://www.pop.nu/en/show_collection.asp?user=2412
> http://www.librarything.com/profile/Auto_Da_Fe
> http://www.thedetails.co.uk/
> http://big-game.tumblr.com/

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