Raving Reviews in US/UKA, Now Sold to Denmark!
The English edition of Jonas Lüscher’s KRAFT, just published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York, receives raving press abroad and will be published by Jensen & Dalgaard in Denmark as well as in eight other languages! KRAFT is a deeply comic, but also dark tale of a German professor going to California in an attempt to win an academic competition with a million-dollar prize money by giving the best presentation on the age-old subject of how there can be evil in the world if God exists. The novel won him the Swiss Book Award.
»An exceedingly cerebral comic novel . . . These long winter nights offer a chance to burrow into literary challenges―this winter especially. And though Kraft may sound far afield from your usual reading choices, much of it takes place in America and revolves around the promise of Reaganomics.« ―Ron Charles, The Washington Post
»A finely handled, comic dramatization of the microcompromises, stifled shame and bad-faith gymnastics of sham writers who tell the Culture whatever it wants to hear . . . Lüscher is a perceptive commentator on Silicon Valley’s heady and hubristic ideological climate, with its smug boasts of “disruption” and death-denying (or rather “posthuman transtheotechnist”) longings . . . Lüscher sniffs out the fraudulence in the very roots of his characters’ political stances.« ―Rob Doyle, The New York Times Book Review
»A pitch-perfect social satire . . . an allegory for our techno-crazed, consumption-addicted, soul-crushing times . . . An alternative, perhaps, to the simplistic formula underlying so many best-sellers today, which it pretends to apply.« ―Kai Maristed, The Arts Fuse
»An arch, fascinating satire of world-weary European skepticism and irrational American hopefulness . . . [written with] gloomy humor and dense but never arid ruminations. This is a wonderfully strange novel, and one not to be missed.« ―Publishers Weekly (Starred)
»A sly and witty satire on philosophical bad faith the age of neoliberalism.« –Shaun Whiteside, New Books in German
»Jonas Lüscher’s Kraft is a pitch-perfect comedy of manners about the search for meaning in Silicon Valley, a brilliant, bemused expedition to a land we have come to know all too well.« –Adrian Daub, author of What Tech Calls Thinking
»A German professor meets Silicon Valley. This tragicomic encounter discharges a bunch of neoliberal myths, startup fantasies, techno-optimistic visions, and religions of the market. Jonas Lüscher’s Kraft is a thrilling campus novel, a sparkling comedy on human flaws, and a brilliant essay about the burlesque spectacle of ideas in recent capitalism.« –Joseph W. Vogl, professor of Modern German Literature, Cultural and Media Studies at Humboldt University Berlin and Princeton University
»The author of the much-praised Barbarian Spring . . . presents a clever, science-skeptical, contemporary novel, unparalleled in the new vanguard of Germany literature.« –Gerrit Bartels, Deutschlandradio Kultur
»The book of the hour, the book for our time.« –Deutschlandfunk
»A highly intelligent, deeply enjoyable read that offers hilarious twists and turns.« –Holger Ehling, Buchkultur
»Jonas Lüscher has written an absolutely brilliant book (…) Lüscher is a masterful observer of society.(…) In my opinion, Lüscher, born 1976, is this year’s great discovery. His novella’s content is definitely relevant. But the truth, that shines through from every sentence, is revealed by its style.« – Ijoma Mangold, Die Zeit
»Jonas Lüscher’s brilliant debut novel ‘Kraft’ tells of the clash of Old Europe and New Economy« Süddeutsche Zeitung
»Lüscher’s prose is cinematic and evocative.« Deutschlandradio Kultur
»Acutely observed, the narrative voice is at once old fashioned and modern, hilarious and bold.« Die Welt
Richard Kraft, professor of rhetoric in Tübingen, is unhappily married and badly in debt, but he may have found a way out of his misery. His old friend István, a professor at Stanford, has invited him to join him in entering a competition for Silicon Valley. The challenge is to compose an eighteen-minute lecture in the style of Leibniz’s Theodicy to explain why this is the best of all possible worlds and why we can still improve it. The winning entry will receive a prize of a million dollars. With that kind of money, Kraft could free himself from his demanding wife once and for all… With precision, wit, and bite.
Right sold to Croatia/ Bozicevic, Denmark/Jensen& Dalgaard, Egypt/Al Arabi, France/Autrement, Hungary, Netherlands/Wereldbibliotheek, Spain/Vegueta, Russia/Arsis, USA/FSG
The foreign press on Jonas Lüscher’s debut novella, BARBARIAN SPRING, published by Jensen & Dalgaard in 2019:
»A most humorous and convincing satire of the ridiculous excesses of those responsible for the financial crisis that began in 2008. That Lüscher’s plot could easily take place in 2015 makes the novel all the more engaging and relevant. Why, it prompts us to ask, do we never learn from our financial mistakes?« The New York Times
»Slim and sharp as a dagger. . . . Superbly translated.« Wall Street Journal
»This witty, delicately wrought novella exposes the kind of follies and excesses that could easily bring us to the brink of another disaster.« Sydney Morning Herald
»Equally hilarious and astute, Barbarian Spring brings to light the pitfalls of an existence fixated on wealth.« World Literature Today
Rights to BARBARIAN SPRING have been sold to Albania/Argeta, Belarus/Paperus, Bulgaria/Colibri, Croatia/Edicije Božievcevi Egypt/Al Arabi, Denmark /Jensen&Dalgaard, Finland/Lurra, Great Britain/Haus Publishing, (English world rights), Italy/Keller, Netherlands/Wereldbibliotheek, Russia/Ripol, Slovenia/Litera, Spain/Gatopardo, Turkey/Tekin Yayinevi, Ukraine/Osnovy