Eurotrash

This acclaimed and crazy novel, a finalist for Germany's most important award, has as its narrator the alter ego of Christian Kracht, a writer and dandy who embarks on a road trip with his alcoholic and semi-psychotic mother. They carry with them a bag full of cash that they intend to give away piecemeal throughout the country. It is the scandalous sum that they have inherited from their Nazi family, and that has been invested for years in the arms industry.

Perhaps shedding that wealth is shedding the great European shame of the 20th century? Of transgenerational guilt and the horrors of war that still remain in our society; or perhaps, for them, it is just a matter of exorcising the internal demons of the family, whose history, in any case, repeatedly intersects with that of Germany.

With lucidity and astonishing metaphysical depth, Kracht weaves in Eurotrash the threads of the memory of an entire continent into the simple chronicle of a broken bond that seeks to rebuild itself. A moving story, as heartbreaking as it is comic, that reflects on truth and conscience, a first-rate contemporary satire that tells us about the healing power of words and the debris of a history that a