LÁSZLÓ KRASZNAHORKAI Herscht 07769. Reviewed by James Arbuthnott
László Krasznahorkai’s latest novel encompasses physics, the music of JS Bach, and an obsessive correspondence with the German chancellor.
László Krasznahorkai enthusiasts won’t be surprised he’s written a 430-page novel comprising a single sentence. It’s as bleak and haunting a work as ever from the winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize, this time set in the small German town of Kana, postcode 07769, where a man named Florian Herscht takes night classes and writes to Chancellor Angela Merkel, warning of an irreversible global catastrophe.
Published in Krasznahorkai’s native Hungarian in 2021 and translated into English by Ottilie Mulzet for New Directions Publishing, Herscht 07769 is as anxiety-inducing as it is philosophical, told in his unique melancholic style.
For work, Florian cleans graffiti with his neo-Nazi boss, and in his free time listens to amateur Bach recitals to absorb what his boss says is ‘the German spirit’. Here, Florian deals with his night-class teacher Herr Köhler’s particle physics lesson, prompting him to write his letters to Angela Merkel:
… Florian was so deeply immersed in that one single thought that had grabbed hold of him from everything that Herr Köhler had been explaining to him every Tuesday for two years now in the basement of the Lichtenberg Secondary School, explaining to him accurately and with truly illuminating, nearly incendiary, force, so much so that Florian had to come to a standstill, and he did come to a standstill, and then he sunk, and he sunk into it definitively, and he felt – he confessed at times to Herr Köhler – that he would never again be the same as he was before, because he never could have thought that the world, under the danger of a redoubtable fact, would be laid open to a destruction that could occur at any moment, and not only destruction; already, the beginning of the beginning horrified him, and he said: if, in fact, everything teeters on this knife-edge of destruction, then it must have been this way when we came into being as well, and therefore I can no longer be happy, Herr Köhler, when I look up at the sky, because I am fully seized by dread, I sense how unprotected, so unprotected the entire universe is, and because his mentor was seriously alarmed at how Florian always broke down in tears at this point, he tried to console him …
The German setting is a timely return to Europe for Krasznahorkai after his harmonious Japanese book A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East. It’s also a fitting jab at Europe’s quickening far-right infestation, especially in Germany.
Florian’s boss, who took him from ‘the Institute’ and provided a job and an apartment, conducts the local orchestra, which he urges Florian to listen to in his spare time, despite Florian’s difficulty finding the connection with ‘the German spirit’ and the boss’s amateur conducting abilities. The boss drives an unreliable German car, which inflames his childish temper, as do the orchestra’s attempts to fulfil his commands. The boss lifts weights, drinks beer, smokes cigarettes, runs a clandestine nationalist gang, and considers himself a pedigree German.
It’s a valid point about fascists that those who consider themselves of ‘good breeding’ are certainly not the ones most Germans want to represent them.
But new readers should not be discouraged by Herscht 07769‘s unusual plot and lengthy meditations on Bach and impending catastrophe, or Krasznahorkai’s renowned aversion to the full stop. His ability to zoom in on small-town misdeeds and characters and relate them to the universal aspects of life, although certainly cataclysmic, gives readers a chance to consume a new Eastern European misanthrope who is still alive and brooding somewhere in the world.
Krasznahorkai’s long sentences are justified in his writing process. He told Michael Silverblatt on the Bookworm radio show in 2014 that he writes in his head, creating complete sentences taken from the ‘chaos of the universe’ before typing them into his laptop, as the brain does not work in short sentences.
This also lends to his haunting rhythm and the strange humour found within his work. When asked in 2012 by Jim Krusoe on Bookworm how his work combines ‘absolute hopelessness’ and humour, Krasznahorkai responded:
‘There’s a level of hopelessness which is very funny. If you lost your right arm, this is tragic. If you lost your left arm, this is also very tragic. If you lost your right leg, it is absolutely tragic. But if you lost your left leg, it is comic.’
This book will warm Krasznahorkai fans with its familiar melancholy, aided by Mulzet’s indefatigable translation after Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, which won the National Book Award for Translated Literature.
But despite the accolades, Krasznahorkai considers all his works failures. He says never wanted to be a writer and planned to pen just one book, Sátántangó, which was adapted into a six-hour epic by cult filmmaker Béla Tarr. Dubbed ‘the harbinger of the apocalypse’, Krasznahorkai claims he has never been able to say what he wanted to, and so must keep writing. Let’s hope he hasn’t figured it out just yet.
László Krasznahorkai Herscht 07769 translated by Ottilie Mulzet New Directions Publishing 2024 PB 512pp $39.95
Born and raised in Melbourne, James Arbuthnott is a business journalist and book critic based in Sydney whose work has appeared in ArtsHub. Find him on X and Bluesky.
You can buy Herscht 07769 from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.
You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.
If you’d like to help keep the Newtown Review of Books a free and independent site for book reviews, please consider making a donation. Your support is greatly appreciated.
