In 1902, a radical vegetarian and nudist from Nuremberg named August Engelhardt set sail for what was then called the Bismarck Archipelago. His destination: the island Kabakon. His goal: to found a colony based on worship of the sun and coconuts. His malnourished body was found on the beach on Kabakon in 1919; he was forty-three years old.
In his first novel to be translated into English, internationally bestselling author Christian Krachht uses the outlandish details of Engelhardt's life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism and its fundamental foolishness. Playing with the tropes of classic adventure tales like Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, Imperium is funny, bizarre, shocking, and poignant—sometimes all on the same page.
• For readers of Patrick deWitt and Daniel Kehlmann's Measuring the World
• Design named one of the Year's Best Book Covers by The New York Times
• Also a Huffington Post Best Fiction Book of the Year and a World Literature Today Notable Translation
About the Authors
Christian Kracht is a Swiss novelist, journalist, and screenwriter. His previous books include Faserland, 1979, and I Will Be Here, in Sunshine and in Shadow. Imperium was the recipient of the 2012 Wilhelm Raabe literature prize.
Daniel Bowles is a visiting assistant professor of German studies at Boston College. His previous translations include novels by Thomas Meinecke and short texts by Alexander Kluge and Rainald Goetz.
Industry Reviews
“This barbed account of failed idealism shines a bright light on the ravages of obsession, all the while sprinkling the trail with memorably bizarre details.” -- Henry Alford, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
“A delightful historical farce.” -- Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“Imperium is astonishing and captivating, a tongue-in-cheek Conradian literary adventure for our time.” -- Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle
“Christian Kracht's Imperium is a Melvillean masterpiece of the South Seas....A strange, Mephistophelian novel, Kracht's book is also, by several units of some arcane nautical measurement, one of the slyest and most original works of the last several years. And - thanks to Daniel Bowles - it's one of the best translated.” -- Jonathon Sturgeon, Flavorwire
"[One of the Ten] Best Books of 2015: An oddball masterpiece that begins with thumb-sucking nudist August Engelhardt fleeing Germany in 1902 to establish a South Seas utopia?one in which coconuts are the only food. Disaster predictably strikes the idealistic, naïve Engelhardt (a real historical figure) in this strange, engrossing tale, by turns slapstick, philosophical, and suspenseful." -- Publishers Weekly