The books Southern indie booksellers are recommending to readers everywhere!

Nobel 2025

Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai

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Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai
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Gotta admit: after reading the Warning on page one, I almost put this one on the back burner. Twenty pages into the main story, however, I was swept away by an incredibly ardent undertow. The paragraph/sentences were in no way as overwhelming as the Warning. If anything, these “sentegraphs” felt more like I was pulling the string of a Mattel “Farmer Says” See-N-Say, bouncing from character to character with such flawless fluidity that I occasionally had to come up for air, take a five-minute break, then dive right back in. Wonderfully exhausting.

Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai, (List Price: $29.95, New Directions, 9780811226646, December 2025)

Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East by László Krasznahorkai

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A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East by László Krasznahorkai
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A prayer, a spiritual exercise, a meditation on the nature of time, with long, winding sentences that evoke the ploddingness of existence and the labyrinthine endlessness of the search for meaning and enlightenment. I loved the way this one made my brain feel—an alert sort of hypnosis, reminded me of some Calvino and Borges. Especially memorable was the section on how papyrus for sacred scrolls was made!

A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East by László Krasznahorkai, (List Price: $15.95, New Directions, 9780811234474, November 2022)

Reviewed by Kristen Iskandrian, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama

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Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai

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Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai
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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

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