Christian Krachts Werke wurden bislang in 30 Sprachen übersetzt.
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Innsbruck – So it starts again with an “So”, the new book by Christian Kracht. Just like “Fiberland”, which Kracht made famous in 1995 – and which has been emphatically (or slightly disgusted) invoked since then whenever a break in the continuity narrative of German literature has to be marked. Even after the “So”, “Eurotrash” ties in with “Fiberland”. The book is mentioned very aggressively in the first paragraph. As a story that the one who says “I” in “Eurotrash” wrote a quarter of a century ago. The fact that this “I” – as its author is called Christian Kracht – makes the matter obvious. And leads to the black ice. Or nowhere. You can tap into autobiography in “Eurotrash”. But if that was the point, you could also read Kracht’s Wikipedia entry. That may be instructive. And boring.
Superficially, it may be about the Kracht family history, about growing up well-heeled between old Nazis and nouveau riche, “daddy issues” and a mother drugged by barbiturates. But that is – as I said – the foreground. Behind this are other questions: How do what was and what could have been turned into stories? Christian Kracht’s “Eurotrash” is literature on a potentiometer. No auto-fictional gimmick, but narrative criticism turned into a narrative. The framework for this is simple – the consequence is simply spectacular: Buch-Kracht and his aged mother drive – whoever has, has – through Switzerland in a taxi. He accuses, demands coming to terms with the past, the Nazi stories, abuse, the usual inventory of serious e-literature. She counters. Denounces the denunciating furor of the later born as a smug wail and a well-practiced pose: the attack on the ancestors of yore is easy. And a ruse to escape your own ghosts. “What else can you say?” Asks the first-person narrator – and forms his perplexity about the road novel through a postcard bunker.
“Eurotrash” is a dark book, gloomy, relentless, painful. And brutally funny. In the end, there is even a little hope. In “Fiber Land” the “I” failed in the death-longing search for the grave of Thomas Mann. “Eurotrash” ends at the final resting place of Jorge Luis Borges. Borges, the politically often questionable godfather of modern literature, had “Don’t be afraid” written on the tombstone. You may not know what to do, but why should you stop telling it? (jole)