Herscht 07769

The International Booker Award winner's breathtaking new novel about neo-Nazis, particle physics, and graffiti vandalism 'Propulsive and revelatory' The New York Times 'A work of genius' Telegraph Florian Herscht has a problem: having faithfully attended Herr Köhler's classes in particle physics for two years, he is convinced that global cataclysm is imminent. And so he embarks upon a one-sided correspondence with Chancellor Angela Merkel, hoping to convince her of the imminent danger of the complete destruction of all physical matter. Written in one cascading sentence with the force of atomic particles colliding, Krasznahorkai's latest novel is a tour de force, a morality play of blistering satire, a devastating encapsulation of our helplessness in the face of the moral and environmental dilemmas we face.

László Krasznahorkai was born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954. He has written 14 novels and won multiple awards including the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025, the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2019 for Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming, the 2015 Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement and the 2024 Prix Formentor. Several of his most famous novels, including Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, were turned into films by the director Béla Tarr. His books have been translated into forty-two languages, and his most recent, Herscht 07769, was published in 2024. He lives in the hills of Pilisszentlászló in Hungary.