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Cargando... Frühling der Barbaren (2013)por Jonas Lüscher
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On a business trip to Tunisia, Preising, a leading Swiss industrialist, is invited to spend the week with the daughter of a local gangster. He accompanies her to the wedding of two London city traders at a desert luxury resort that was once the site of an old Berber oasis. With the wedding party in full swing and the bride riding up the aisle on a camel, no one is aware that the global financial system stands on the brink of collapse. As the wedding guests nurse their hangovers, they learn that the British pound has depreciated tenfold, and their world begins to crumble around them. So begins Barbarian Spring, the debut novel from Jonas Lüscher, a major emerging voice in European fiction. The timely and unusual novel centers on a culture clash between high finance and the value system of the Maghreb. Provocative and entertaining, Barbarian Spring is a refreshingly original and all-too-believable satire for our times. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)833.92Literature German literature and literatures of related languages German fiction Modern period (1900-) 1990-Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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You can see why this was a priority target for English translation – not just for its portrait of finance wankers (who are in danger of supplanting football hooligans as our most depressing exported stereotype), but also for its vision of the UK as being at the centre of global meltdown. By setting the action just slightly into the future, Lüscher allows himself to imagine some of the consequences of collapse, in terms which, post-Brexit, have become more feasible than ever.
In effect, what Preising was presenting me with here was a variation on the by-now familiar theme of ‘Where were you when Britain went bankrupt?’. Latterly, this genre had taken over from the earlier ‘Where were you on 9/11?’ […] Likewise, we all now vividly remember the moment when the baby-faced PM in his baby-blue silk tie – an unduly optimistic and frivolous choice in the circumstances, I always thought – commenced his speech with the words ‘In thirteen hundred and forty-five, when King Edward the Third told his Florentine bankers…’ Sure, it had far less visual impact than 9/11, but it's still seared on our collective memory.
The climax is a suitably Ballardian spiral into social breakdown and violence, all played out in the microcosm of this North African resort. Lüscher doesn't have Ballard's control or his flashes of genuine weirdness – but he does have a great hook, and the themes of financial disaster and Arab Spring give him plenty to work with. A bullish debut; analysts recommend buy. Warning: likes can go down as well as up. ( )