A review by badoit90
Imperium by Christian Kracht
4.0
4 Stars // Ze Germans at their Wurst
I’ll admit: I chose this book purely by its beautiful cover art. In the end, I came away from this short adventure rather well entertained and impressed by the authors rich language, intrigued to read more by Christian Kracht.
It’s the prose first and foremost that shapes the character of this novel: Intricate, complex sentences paint some beautiful and rich pictures in front of your inner eye. Sometimes the prose is so convoluted though that you have to read the paragraphs a few times to truly grasp the amount of content within. Nevertheless, I have rarely read a book written in such a dense and rich language. The closest I can think of would be Perfume by Patrick Süskind, which also has a similarly poetic prose - just easier to digest. I would therefor highly recommend reading Imperium in Germany, if you are able to do so.
The story itself then is a rather dark and ironic take on the state of the German oversea colonies in the beginning of the 20th century. The novel is not laugh-out-loud funny, but rather subtle in its sarcastic undertone, thereby calling out the perverse cultural appropriation and political insanity we saw at the time. You won’t find many likeable characters in this book - which is the point by the way - but rather a bunch of unfathomable idiots, who desperately try to make things work.
All in all Imperium is a short, dense and mildly entertaining read that had a great graphic designer at work.
I’ll admit: I chose this book purely by its beautiful cover art. In the end, I came away from this short adventure rather well entertained and impressed by the authors rich language, intrigued to read more by Christian Kracht.
It’s the prose first and foremost that shapes the character of this novel: Intricate, complex sentences paint some beautiful and rich pictures in front of your inner eye. Sometimes the prose is so convoluted though that you have to read the paragraphs a few times to truly grasp the amount of content within. Nevertheless, I have rarely read a book written in such a dense and rich language. The closest I can think of would be Perfume by Patrick Süskind, which also has a similarly poetic prose - just easier to digest. I would therefor highly recommend reading Imperium in Germany, if you are able to do so.
The story itself then is a rather dark and ironic take on the state of the German oversea colonies in the beginning of the 20th century. The novel is not laugh-out-loud funny, but rather subtle in its sarcastic undertone, thereby calling out the perverse cultural appropriation and political insanity we saw at the time. You won’t find many likeable characters in this book - which is the point by the way - but rather a bunch of unfathomable idiots, who desperately try to make things work.
All in all Imperium is a short, dense and mildly entertaining read that had a great graphic designer at work.