Kraft

Jonas Lüscher, the author of Barbarian Spring—“a most humorous and convincing satire of the ridiculous excesses of those responsible for the financial crisis” (The New York Times Book Review)—returns to the topic of neoliberal arrogance in his Swiss Book Prize-winning, hilarious, and wicked novel about a man facing the ruins of his life, and his world.

Richard Kraft, a German professor of rhetoric and aging Reaganite and Knight Rider fan, is unhappily married and badly in debt. He sees no way out of his rut until he is invited to participate in a competition to be held in California and sponsored by a Silicon Valley tycoon and “techno-optimist.” The contest is to answer a literal “million-dollar question”: each competitor must compose an eighteen-minute lecture on why our world is still, despite all evidence, the best of all possible worlds, and how we might improve it even further through technology.

Entering into a surreal American landscape, Kraft soon finds what’s left of his life falling to pieces as he struggles to justify as “best” a planet in the hands of such blithe neoliberal cupidity as he encounters on his odyssey to California. Still, with the prize money in his pocket, perhaps Kraft could finally buy his way to a new life . . . But what contortions—physical and philosophical—will he have to subject himself to in order to claim it?

Jonas Lüscher's second novel, Kraft, is a hilarious and wicked tale about a man facing the ruins of his life, and his world.

About the Authors

Jonas Lüscher was born in Switzerland in 1976, and now lives in Munich. His bestselling debut novel, Barbarian Spring, was long-listed for the German Book Prize and nominated for the Swiss Book Prize. It has been translated into sixteen languages and was adapted for the stage. Kraft was ranked first in the February 2017 “SWR Bestenliste,” a list of the best fiction chosen by twenty-six prominent German critics, and went on to win the Swiss Book Prize in 2017.

Tess Lewis is a writer and translator from the French and German. Her translations include works by Peter Handke, Walter Benjamin, Klaus Merz, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Christine Angot, Pascal Bruckner, and Jean-Luc Benoziglio.