An absolutely stunning achievement in fiction. In one meandering, cascading, kaleidoscopic sentence across four hundred pages, Krasznahorkai paints a compelling portrait of the banality, beauty, heartbreak, and absurdity of the current era. We follow Florian Herscht, a gentle giant who works at a graffiti removal service, as he embarks on a one-sided correspondence with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to warn her about the impending end of the world through a reversal of the Big Bang. Meanwhile, he is roped by his boss (a neo-Nazi and inveterate Bach fan) into hunting down a graffiti artist who has been defacing all of the monuments to Johann Sebastian Bach in the city with pictures of wolves. Then real wolves show up, and things go off the rails. Herscht 07769 is weird and sad and truly one of a kind. It invades your mind and spirals outward, demolishing your sense of self and embedding you in the hopelessness and powerlessness of modern life.
Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai, (List Price: $18.95, New Directions, 9780811231534, September 2024)
Reviewed by Charlie Marks, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia