Christian Kracht is a Swiss novelist who writes in German. He has been popular since 1995, when Faserland’s debut won him favorable comparisons with Bret Easton Ellis and Nick Hornby. However, Kracht’s high profile among German-language readers was The First Empire of 2012, inspired by the historical life of August Engelhardt, an eccentric who founded a utopian cult in the South Seas, worshiping the sun and eating cooks.
Eurotrash works on a smaller, more personal canvas. It tells the story of a Swiss-German medieval writer called Christian who wrote a novel called Faserland in 1990 and now finds himself in Zurich, visiting his aging mother. The apparent autofictional form might seem sycophantic if the revelations that follow were not so heartfelt. Christian’s mother is in her 80s, frail, insane and self-medicating with a mixture of alcohol and prescription drugs.
The plot is driven by Christian’s desire to be able to revisit familiar landscapes from his former life on a journey from Zurich, south towards Lake Geneva, and through the Swiss Alps. He hopes to make a cathartic break with his family’s past. Since that past involves childhood sexual abuse, repentant Nazi elders, sadomasochism and large fortunes wasted from the weapons industry, it’s surprising to hear that the new sequel is not only moving and uplifting, but surprisingly funny.
Christiana and her mother take a half-planned way to give away their ill-gotten millions. A journey through several black comedians takes them to a common lion, a private airstrip and inside a broken-down ski lift. The pair argue, tell stories, reminisce, compose and come out again. Their division against the common enemy can be overcome briefly, but for a short time. Christian, even when their relationship is at its most acute, tends to his mother’s colostomy bag.
As the journey proceeds, the novel becomes less naturalistic and more self-reflexive. At one point the bus driver suggests that he write a book about them. Close the match quickly to close the account down. A Christian’s mother acquires a wonderful ability to foresee and explain the future and explain her role in it. “Go and read Flaubert,” he tells his son. “You see how it’s done. Learn from the masters.
It’s a familiar Eurotrash book, with forays into German history and allusions to Shakespeare, myth and pop culture. Part of the sweetness is the writer’s voice, a self-conscious snob, who anatomises the greed and suspicion of the kind born super.
Christian’s father recently made his fortune working for the real-life newspaper magnate Axel Springer, a man of immense wealth, political sympathies and enormous cultural influence who has often been compared to Rupert Murdoch. Christian tells us, first of all, that “his youth and his age were launched into arrogance and hyperbole and fraud and indecency through dead money.” In one place he describes a funeral meal which was held in memory of his father. The guests sit awkwardly in silence “only disturbed by the crowd of waiters who told and described the gimmicky round of courses in advance. Abysmal, depressing the burghers, this spoke loudly and proudly of lobster tails in the essence of peas, these Chateaubriands, these basil sorbet.
The scene looks like something out of a succession of TV shows, the subtly scornful opulence it portrays and is narrated by a literate and self-aware version of Kendall Roy. Translator Daniel Bowles does a great job here and throughout, rendering the prose into a lively English that feels both idiomatic and inventive – “the crowd of waiters” is lovely, and I pat myself on the back for “gimmicky roundelay”. .
What keeps the book from being just wise-alecky is the intimate tenderness and insight it brings to the heart of the mother-son relationship. Christiana and her mother love each other, but their love contains a great deal of pain, hatred, and pain. the barbs between each other feel fresh and vital. There are moments of extreme sadness when a Christian struggles with his mother’s pregnancy and recalls the humiliations inflicted on him by an unbelieving husband. However, he is not willing enough to meet the memory, which is part of his sexual approach, protesting: “I must be allowed, like … uh, like an esthete not to deal with my mother’s lust.”
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Short but hefty, Eurotrash is a coming-of-age book that infuses real knowledge about privilege, wealth and the 20th century. It involves something about the writer’s painful awareness that if there is such a thing as being on the wrong side of history, he and his family are firmly in it. As he and his mother drive off, looking for an elusive catharsis, it sometimes feels like the book has become bigger, but the clever ending seemed inevitable in a figure that in retrospect was inevitable and left a lump in my throat.
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Eurotrash by Christian Kracht translated by Daniel Bowles and published by Serpents Tail (£12.99). Support the tutor and tutor, order your copy guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.