Imperium: A Fiction of the South Seas
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Winner of the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize
One of Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Books of 2015
A Huffington Post Best Fiction Book of the Year
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 of Kabakon. His goal: to establish a colony based on worship of the sun and coconuts. His malnourished body was found on the beach on Kabakon in 1919; he was forty-three years old.
In his first novel to be translated into English, internationally bestselling author Christian Kracht uses the outlandish details of Engelhardt’s life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism and its fundamental foolishness. “A Melvillean masterpiece of the South Seas” (Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire), Imperium is funny, bizarre, shocking, and poignant---sometimes all on the same page.
