- 193 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
One of
Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Books of the Year: An uncategorizable, "astonishing and captivating" novel of obsession, adventure, and coconuts (Karl Ove Knausgaard,
New York Timesābestselling author of
My Struggle).
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 forty-three years old.
Imperium uses the outlandish details of Engelhardt's life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism and its fundamental foolishness. Engelhardt is at once a sympathetic outsiderāmocked, misunderstood, physically assaultedāand a rigid ideologue, and his misguided notions of purity and his spiral into madness presage the horrors of the mid-twentieth century.
Playing with the tropes of classic adventure tales like Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, Christian Kracht's international bestseller is funny, bizarre, shocking, and poignantāsometimes all on the same page. His allusions are misleading, his historical time lines are twisted, his narrator is unreliableāand the result is a novel that is also a mirror cabinet and a maze pitted with trapdoors. Both a provocative satire and a serious meditation on the fragility and audacity of human activity, Imperium, by a recipient of the Hermann Hesse Literature Prize and the Swiss Book Prize, is impossible to categorize, and utterly unlike anything you've read before.
"This barbed account of failed idealism shines a bright light on the ravages of obsession, all the while sprinkling the trail with memorably bizarre details." ā The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
"A delightful historical farce." ā The Wall Street Journal
"A tongue-in-cheek Conradian literary adventure for our time." āKarl Ove Knausgaard
"[A] strange, engrossing tale, by turns slapstick, philosophical, and suspenseful." ā Publishers Weekly
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 forty-three years old.
Imperium uses the outlandish details of Engelhardt's life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism and its fundamental foolishness. Engelhardt is at once a sympathetic outsiderāmocked, misunderstood, physically assaultedāand a rigid ideologue, and his misguided notions of purity and his spiral into madness presage the horrors of the mid-twentieth century.
Playing with the tropes of classic adventure tales like Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, Christian Kracht's international bestseller is funny, bizarre, shocking, and poignantāsometimes all on the same page. His allusions are misleading, his historical time lines are twisted, his narrator is unreliableāand the result is a novel that is also a mirror cabinet and a maze pitted with trapdoors. Both a provocative satire and a serious meditation on the fragility and audacity of human activity, Imperium, by a recipient of the Hermann Hesse Literature Prize and the Swiss Book Prize, is impossible to categorize, and utterly unlike anything you've read before.
"This barbed account of failed idealism shines a bright light on the ravages of obsession, all the while sprinkling the trail with memorably bizarre details." ā The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
"A delightful historical farce." ā The Wall Street Journal
"A tongue-in-cheek Conradian literary adventure for our time." āKarl Ove Knausgaard
"[A] strange, engrossing tale, by turns slapstick, philosophical, and suspenseful." ā Publishers Weekly
Frequently asked questions
Yes, you can cancel anytime from the Subscription tab in your account settings on the Perlego website. Your subscription will stay active until the end of your current billing period. Learn how to cancel your subscription.
No, books cannot be downloaded as external files, such as PDFs, for use outside of Perlego. However, you can download books within the Perlego app for offline reading on mobile or tablet. Learn more here.
Perlego offers two plans: Essential and Complete
- Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
- Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, weāve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes! You can use the Perlego app on both iOS or Android devices to read anytime, anywhere ā even offline. Perfect for commutes or when youāre on the go.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access Imperium by Christian Kracht, Daniel Bowles in PDF and/or ePUB format. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
eBook ISBN
9780374709860Subtopic
Literature GeneralTable of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Part One
- Part Two
- Part Three
- Acknowledgments
- A Note About the Author
- A Note About the Translator
- Newsletter Sign-up
- Contents
- Copyright