László Krasznahorkai Book order

The National Book Award winner's breathtaking new novel about neo-Nazis, particle physics, and Johann Sebastian Bach

A joyful ode-in a single soaring, crazy sentence-to the interconnectedness of great (and mad) minds

The grandson of Prince Genji lives outside of space and time and wanders the grounds of an old monastery in Kyoto. The monastery, too, is timeless, with barely a trace of any human presence. The wanderer is searching for a garden that has long captivated him. This novel by International Booker Prize winner Laszlo Krasznahorkai - perhaps his most serene and poetic work - describes a search for the[Bokinfo].

Chasing Homer incarnates a classic nightmare: the flight for survival at an ever-escalating velocity, sped on not only by Krasznahorkai's signature breathlessness, but also by a unique musical score and intense illustrations

"Set in contemporary times, Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming tells the story of a Prince Myshkin-like figure, Baron Bela Wenckheim, who decides to return at the end of his life to the provincial Hungarian town of his birth. Having escaped from his many casino debts in Buenos Aires, where he was living in exile, he wishes to be reunited with his high school sweetheart Marika. What follows is an endless storm of gossip, con men, and local politicians, vividly evoking the small town's alternately drab and absurd existence. All along, the Professor--a world-famous natural scientist who studies mosses and inhabits a bizarre Zen-like shack in a desolate area outside of town--offers long rants and disquisitions on his own attempts to immunize himself from thought. Spectacular actions are staged, death and the abyss loom, until finally doom is brought down on the unsuspecting residents of the town"-- Provided by publisher

"In this literary diary, Krasznahorkai chronicles his attempts to fathom the life of Herman Melville, which is also the source of inspiration for his forthcoming novella Spadework for a Palace. Retracing Melville's steps, Krasznahorkai becomes engrossed in a web of chance encounters and coincidences that stretch from Manhattan to Nantucket, to London and to Berlin. Over the course of his wanderings, Krasznahorkai finds himself increasingly alienated from his present-day surroundings, drawn instead to the company of ghosts: the novelist Malcolm Lowry when he was down-and-out, the visionary architect Lebbeus Woods and of course - Melville himself. Ornan Rotem's photographic essay follows Krasznahorkai on his forays, both in space and time, creating a subtle portrait of a creative mind at work and the places he encounters."--Publisher

One of the great inventors of new forms in contemporary literature ... there is nothing else like it in contemporary literature Adam Thirwell New York Review of Books

In The Last Wolf, a philosophy professor is mistakenly hired to write the true tale of the last wolf of Extremadura, a barren stretch of Spain. His miserable experience is narrated in a single, rolling sentence to a patently bored bartender in a dreary Berlin bar. In Herman, a master trapper is asked to clear a forest's last 'noxious beasts.' Herman begins with great zeal, although in time he switches sides, deciding to track entirely new game... In Herman II, the same events are related from the perspective of strange visitors to the region, a group of hyper-sexualised aristocrats who interrupt their orgies to pitch in with the manhunt of poor Herman...These intense, perfect novellas, full of Krasznhorkai's signature sense of foreboding and dark irony, are perfect examples of his craft.

"Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is both a travel memoir and the chronicle of a distinct intellectual shift as one of the most captivating contemporary writers and thinkers begins to engage with the cultures of Asia and the legacies of its interactions with Europe in a newly globalized society. Rendered in English by award-winning translator Ottilie Mulzet, Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is an important work, marking the emergence of Krasznahorkai as a truly global novelist"--Amazon.com

Winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize War & War begins at a point of danger: on a dark train platform Korim is on the verge of being attacked and robbed by thuggish teenagers. From here, we are carried along by the insistent voice of this nervous clerk. Desperate, at times almost mad, but also keenly empathic, Korim has discovered in a small Hungarian town's archives an antique manuscript of startling beauty: it narrates the epic tale of brothers-in-arms struggling to return home from a disastrous war.Korim is determined to do away with himself, but before he commits suicide, he feels he must escape to New York with the precious manuscript and commit it to eternity by typing it all out onto the world wide web. Following Korim with obsessive realism through the streets of New York (from his landing in a Bowery flophouse to his move far uptown with a mad interpreter), War and War relates his encounters with a fascinating range of people in a world torn between viciousness and mysterious beauty.Following the eight chapters of War & War is a short 'prequel acting as a sequel', 'Isaiah', which brings us to a dark bar, years before in Hungary, where Korim rants against the world and threatens suicide. Written like nothing else (turning single sentences into chapters), War & War affirms W. G. Sebald's comment that Krasznahorkai's prose far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing.