Eurotrash

It’s autofiction on the autobahn in this incendiary outing from Kracht (Imperium). A middle-aged writer named Christian Kracht visits his mother in Zurich, where she’s been living alone and subsisting on vodka, phenobarbital, and cheese slices since divorcing her rich husband. Disgusted by the “city of poseurs and braggarts and debasements,” by his estimation, he proposes a road trip, determined to coax her out of her claustrophobic apartment and her “spider web of resentment, fury, and loneliness.” She accepts, on the condition that he help her “squander” a substantial amount of cash from her bank account, and he agrees (“the only way to deal with money sensibly was to give it away,” Christian reflects). Thanks to their liberally paid taxi driver, they visit an eerie commune, head to the mountains in search of wild edelweiss, and visit Borges’s grave in Geneva, the only city Christian detests more than Zurich. All the while, the two warily circle around their simmering resentments and Christian’s disgust with his “dead and soulless” family’s Nazi connections. A playful tale of reconciliation that never becomes saccharine, this is one readers won’t want to miss. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Oct.)