Christian Kracht is a Swiss novelist who writes in German. He has been publishing since 1995, when his debut Faserland won him favourable comparisons to Bret Easton Ellis and Nick Hornby. Despite Kracht’s high profile among German-language readers, Eurotrash is only the third of his novels to be translated into English. The first was 2012’s Imperium, inspired by the life of the historical figure August Engelhardt, an eccentric who founded a utopian cult in the South Seas based on sun worship and eating coconuts.
Eurotrash works a smaller, more personal canvas. It tells the story of a middle aged Swiss-German writer called Christian who wrote a novel called Faserland in the 1990s and now finds himself in Zurich, visiting his elderly mother. The apparently autofictional form might seem tricksy, if the revelations that follow weren’t so heartfelt. Christian’s mother is in her 80s, frail, mentally ill and medicating herself with a mixture of alcohol and prescription drugs.
