Imperium

A German South Sea Ballad

In "Imperium," Christian Kracht tells a story of escape set in the German colonies of the South Seas, skillfully and cheerfully playing with the forms of the historical adventure novel reminiscent of Melville, Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, or Jack London. He aimed to save the world, establish a new religion, even found his own empire, and realize a utopia that would redeem not only himself but humanity, far from the destructive European civilization that was just embarking on modernity and the catastrophes of the First and Second World Wars. However, in the isolation of the South Seas, in a colony of Wilhelmine Germany, a sun-worshipper obsessed with a vegetarian obsession spirals into madness, foreshadowing the abysses of the 20th century. In his fourth novel, Christian Kracht depicts the grotesque, lost world of German New Guinea, a world doomed to perish yet strangely reflecting our present. At the same time, Christian Kracht's "Imperium" is an astonishing, often humorous study of the fragility and arrogance of human action.