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Kunzru’s smart and thought-provoking sixth novel draws a line from German Romanticism to Trump and the alt-right
The title of Hari Kunzru’s sixth novel is taken from the famous scene in The Matrix where protagonist Neo is offered a choice: the red pill will allow him to see reality, however abhorrent, while the blue pill will allow him to live inside the system’s simulations in ongoing and harmonious ignorance. Right from the off, then, we know we’re in for a book about the age-old quest for an understanding of the true nature of our circumstances – the human mind’s troubled confrontation with reality.
The first section is called “Wannsee”, the name of an area on the outskirts of Berlin where the narrator arrives for a three-month residency at the Deuter Centre in order to work on a book about “the construction of the self in lyric poetry”. And I confess that I had misgivings at first: I dislike writers writing about writing retreats and fellowships. I am also chary of breakdown novels; there is such an immense and compelling canon in this crowded space – Thomas Bernhard, Franz Kafka, Nikolai Gogol, Sylvia Plath, Albert Camus, Virginia Woolf … Continue reading...