Kraft

Jonas Lüscher, the author of Barbarian Spring-a most humorous and convincing satire of the ridiculous excesses of those responsible for the financial crisis (The New York Times Book Review)-returns to the topic of neoliberal arrogance in his Swiss Book Prize-winning, hilarious, and wicked novel about a man facing the ruins of his life, and his worldRichard Kraft, a German professor of rhetoric, an aging Reaganite, and a Knight Rider fan, is unhappily married and badly in debt. He sees no way out of his rut until he is invited to participate in a competition to be held in California that is sponsored by a Silicon Valley tycoon and techno-optimist. The contest is to answer a literal million-dollar question: each competitor must compose an eighteen-minute lecture on why our world is still, despite all evidence to the contrary, the best of all possible worlds, and how we might improve it even further through technology. Entering into a surreal American landscape, Kraft soon finds what's left of his life falling to pieces as he struggles to justify as best a world in the hands of those invested in such blithe neoliberal cupidity as he encounters on his odyssey to California. Still, with the prize money in his pocket, perhaps Kraft could finally buy his way to a new life . . . But what contortions-physical and philosophical-will he have to subject himself to in order to claim it?