Showing results by author "Daniel Bowles - translator" in All Categories

In 1902, a radical vegetarian and nudist from Nuremberg named August Engelhardt set sail for what was then called the Bismarck Archipelago. His destination: the island Kabakon. His goal: to found a colony based on worship of the sun and coconuts. His malnourished body was found on the beach on Kabakon in 1919; he was 43 years old. Christian Kracht's Imperium uses the outlandish details of Engelhardt's life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism and its fundamental foolishness.

Still grieving the death of her mother, 29-year-old Akiko is single and lives in self-imposed isolation in Tokyo. Then one evening, she unexpectedly runs into Kento, her first love from school. Kento now leads a reclusive life as a hikikomori, only venturing out at night.

To have, to be, and to appear: that is the topic of 24-year-old Vivian’s master’s thesis, an ambitious work that explores the role of gender in social, artistic, and intellectual pursuits. To gather her research, Vivian peppers her friends and classmates with a series of increasingly provocative questions guaranteed to spark the curiosity of anyone who has ever questioned why things are the way they are, particularly regarding the perception of gender between individuals and in society. Adventurous listeners are subsequently led through the same questions by a diverse quintet of characters....

The United States prides itself on being the world’s melting pot, but during a long, hot summer in coastal North Carolina, three young people will put that theory to the test. A German named Tillmann is vacationing in the States with his girlfriend and corresponding with an African American colleague about the evolution of blues music.