Afrika - by Daniel Kehlmann (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From "one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today" (Jeffrey Eugenides) comes a comic tale of casual barbarism, dangerous lunacy, and accidental authority.

In the winter of 1884, the great colonial powers meet in Berlin. The order of the day: how to divide up the vast continent of Africa between them. For Legation Counsellor Strinetzky though, a minor Austrian diplomat drafted in to the conference so his superior can spend the day practicing for a piano recital, this day of grand global diplomacy is a backdrop to personal crises. His marriage is edging towards the point of no return. He's embroiled himself into a career-ending expenses scandal. And, more worryingly, a petty slight to a Prussian soldier has landed him in a pistol duel scheduled for the very next morning.

As the leaders of European imperialism bargain and allocate, their allegiances to each other constantly shifting and the political game ever more trepidatious, Strinetzky will be relieved to make it through the next two days alive, if not with honour intact. But, as it turns out, much more is riding on Strinetzky's hapless maneuverings than his own life.

In Afrika, Daniel Kehlmann lays bare the absurdity and brutality of empire with imagination and deadly wit.

Review Quotes

"Behind the grandiloquent claims of imperialism, the many civilizing missions in Africa, lay crooked men hectically exporting their corruption abroad. I have yet to read a novel that captures this fundamental truth about the makers of the modern world with such narrative brio, intellectual acuity and coruscating humour. Afrika looks set to be the classic novel about foreign policymaking, a worthy counterpart to Scoop, the essential fiction about foreign journalism." --Pankaj Mishra, bestselling author of Age of Anger

About the Author

Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975. His novels and plays have won numerous prizes, including the Candide Preis, the Heimito von Doderer Literature Prize, the Kleist Prize, the WELT-Literaturpreis, and the Thomas Mann Prize. His novel Tyll was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize, and Measuring the World has been translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in post-war German literature. He currently lives in Berlin and New York.

Ross Benjamin is the translator of numerous works of German language literature, including Franz Kafka's Diaries, Clemens J. Setz's Indigo, Joseph Roth's Job, Kevin Vennemann's Close to Jedenew, Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion, and Daniel Kehlmann's The Director, Tyll, and You Should Have Left. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Benjamin was also awarded the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar's Speak, Nabokov. His translation of Tyll was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and The Director was selected as a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year and was also shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.