Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming
Territory Rights — Worldwide including Canada, but excluding the British Commonwealth and the European Union.
Description
Set in contemporary times, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming tells the story of a Prince Myshkin–like figure, Baron Béla Wenckheim, who returns at the end of his life to his provincial Hungarian hometown. Having escaped from his many casino debts in Buenos Aires, where he was living in exile, he longs to be reunited with his high-school sweetheart Marika. Confusions abound, and what follows is an endless storm of gossip, con men, and local politicians, vividly evoking the small town’s alternately drab and absurd existence. All along, the Professor—a world-famous natural scientist who studies mosses and inhabits a bizarre Zen-like shack in a desolate area outside of town—offers long rants and disquisitions on his attempts to immunize himself from thought. Spectacular actions are staged as death and the abyss loom over the unsuspecting townfolk.
Reviews
"A vision of painstaking beauty." — NPR
"“I’ve said a thousand times that I always wanted to write just one book. Now, with Baron, I can close this story. With this novel I can prove that I really wrote just one book in my life. This is the book—Satantango, Melancholy, War and War, and Baron. This is my one book.”"
— László Krasznahorkai, Paris Review Interview
"One of the most mysterious artists now at work." — Colm Tóibín
"His works tends to get passed around like rare currency. One of the most profoundly unsettling experiences I have had as a reader." — James Wood
"The Hungarian master of the apocalypse." — Susan Sontag
"The universality of Krasznahorkai’s vision rivals that of Gogol’s Dead Souls and far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing."
— W. G. Sebald
