Imperium: A Fiction of the South Seas

by Christian Kracht

No Customer Reviews

Select Format

Select Condition

Book Overview

One of Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Books of 2015
One of Huffington Post's "18 Best Fiction Books of 2015"

An outrageous, fantastical, uncategorizable novel of obsession, adventure, and coconuts
In 1902, a radical vegetarian and nudist from Nuremberg named August Engelhardt set sail for what was then called the Bismarck Archipelago, in German New Guinea. His destination: the island 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.

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. Engelhardt is at once a pitiable, misunderstood outsider and 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 such as Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, Kracht's novel, an international bestseller, is funny, bizarre, shocking, and poignant. His allusions are misleading, his historical time line is twisted, his narrator is unreliable--and the result is a novel that is a cabinet of mirrors, a maze pitted with trapdoors.

Both a provocative satire and a serious meditation on the fragility and audacity of human activity, Imperium is impossible to categorize and utterly unlike anything you've read before.

Format:Hardcover

Language:English

ISBN:0374175241

ISBN13:9780374175245

Release Date:July 2015

Publisher:Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Length:192 Pages

Weight:0.75 lbs.

Dimensions:0.7" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Related Subjects

Fiction Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews

0 rating

Write a review

ThriftBooks sells millions of used books at the lowest everyday prices. We personally assess every book's quality and offer rare, out-of-print treasures. We deliver the joy of reading in recyclable packaging with free standard shipping on US orders over $15. ThriftBooks.com. Read more. Spend less.

Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ^® and the ThriftBooks ^® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC

Imperium: A Fiction of the South Seas

Select Format

Select Condition

Recommended

Book Overview

Customer Reviews

Popular Categories

Website

My Account

Partnerships

Quick Help

About Us

Follow Us