Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of Eurotrash by Christian Kracht!

First published in Germany in 2021; published in translation by Liveright on October 22, 2024

The narrator in Eurotrash shares the name of the novel’s author. Whether the story is autobiographical I don’t know, although the narrator is a writer whose first novel was Faserland, as was the first novel of the real Christian Knacht. The line between the fictional Christian and the real one is blurred when the narrator’s mother, out of the blue, asks him whether is aware that they “are being described in a book right now, like Cervantes?” Blurring the line between reality and fiction is a staple of postmodern fiction, but I can’t say it ever impresses me.

Fictional Christian’s father, like the real Christian, had a father named Christian. After World War II, Christian’s fictional father was sent to America “to learn about democracy and bring it back to a ravaged Germany.” His father invented a fictional life in America, bragging of feats he never achieved. The novel’s early pages recount Christian’s attempt to learn the truth about his father.

Like a good bit of fiction from Germany, Eurotrash tentatively explores the impact of the Nazi party on the descendants of Hitler’s faithful. Christian blames his family for doing too little to resist the Nazis (particularly a grandfather who went through denazification and returned to Germany to organize a new group of Nordic nationalists). “The people to blame for the entire misery of the world are you and me,” Christian tells his mother.

Christian’s mother celebrated her eightieth birthday in a psychiatric ward. She was released to her apartment in Zurich because (in Christian’s view) she is able to fool doctors into believing she is in sound mental health. Christian’s mother enjoys cheap white wine, vodka, and phenobarbital. Perhaps those substances scramble her brain, but they probably help her cope with the repeated rapes she endured when she was eleven.

Christian tells himself that it is “an indication of mental health to be able to adapt to such a deeply disturbed family.” Christian may be fooling himself. Although Christian visits his mother in Zurich once a month, she complains that he is not an attentive son. Christian decides to take her on a trip, with the secret goal of depositing her in a vegan commune he saw in a brochure. He plans to tell his mother that the commune is a luxury resort and then disappear.

Christian hires a driver and off they go. Christian’s mother stops at her bank and withdraws a bag full of cash for their trip. She has a colostomy bag but she just fired her housekeeper, the only person who knew how to change it. On the trip, the task falls to Christian, much to his chagrin.

The commune’s pro-Nazi philosophy is not what Christian expected. The road trip continues, to Feutersoey for trout, to the mountains to see edelweiss in bloom, to Morges to see the house where Christian’s father died, finally to a Geneva cemetery to visit the grave of Borges. Perhaps Christian will even take his mother to Africa to see zebras, something she insists she has always wanted to do. Or perhaps he will tell his mother that she is in Africa and trust that her flirtation with dementia will turn the story into reality. Or perhaps his mother simply wills her own reality into being.

While Germany’s history hovers over the story like a storm cloud, the story that eventually emerges is personal. It is the story of a mother and son, both of whom feel guilty about the absence of a firm connection. They spend most of their road trip quarreling, perhaps developing a new understanding of each other, perhaps approaching a forgiveness that goes unspoken.

Although steeped in family history, the story generates sympathy for its two central characters, notwithstanding their aggravating natures. Christian’s approach to his mother is passive-aggressive, while his mother’s approach to her son is manipulative. Christian sometimes pokes at his mother, at other times listens silently as she criticizes him: “I simply preferred silence, as everyone had preferred to swallow down and conceal and keep everything secret, for a whole dead, blind, and nasty century.” The dynamic between the characters, culminating in a surprising and ambiguously touching ending, gives the novel its tragic soul.

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This book was better than I expected. While bucket list trip books aren't usually my favorite, I found this book to be disturbingly charming and an overall fun read.

I am so thankful to WW Norton, Christian Kracht, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this galley before publication day. I really enjoyed the dialogue and plot of this book and can’t wait to chat this one up with my friends!

I loved this book and was enthralled with the writing. I loved the character study. Would read more from the author!

I fear something got lost in translation with this book. Whether it got lost in *literal* translation to English or from the pages to my brain, I am unsure. It had the makings of a book that I’d love but I was completely disconnected from the story. The beginning felt very information heavy, so it took me a while to truly get to the meat of the book. Sadly, by then I wasn’t as interested. The way the story is told is a little convoluted and had me feeling like I was trying to chase a squirrel around for a story.

I haven't read Faserland, the author Christian Kracht's heralded 1995 debut, but it seems that Eurotrash picks up 25 years later, with the 40-yr old Faserland author also named Christian Kracht, and heading to Zurich to pick up his aging mother from a mental institution. The blurbs I read about Eurotrash made it sound like this would be a combination comedic mother-son romp through Switzerland and dark family history; I did enjoy the image of the duo getting rid of misbegotten gains by tossing them out of a ripped and dirty plastic bag.

I think Christian Kracht fans get a lot out of the semi-autobiographical seeming elements here, that I feel went over my head, not being familiar. I've read a bit about Axel Springer before, and Nazi times, and often felt I knew where Eurotrash was headed but then it didn't go there with specifics about where the Kracht fortune came from exactly. So many awful things are alluded to but not actually explained or even described, from abuse, rape, arson, and obscure afflictions like "incurable porcelain sickness" and "glass disease," which I guess I'm glad about? But I do kind of feel like this was just a bridge to the third installment of a series.

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht is a darkly comic, satirical novel that delves into the absurdities of wealth, privilege, and European identity. The story follows a dysfunctional mother-son duo on a bizarre road trip across Switzerland as they confront their troubled past, dysfunctional family ties, and the burden of inherited guilt. It kind of reminded me of Schitt's Creek or Arrested Development. Thank you W. W. Norton & Company, Christian Kracht, and NetGalley for this ARC!

Really enjoyed this read and I wanted this book to be longer! I felt very invested in both the son and the mother and their lives. I now have to read Faserland by the author! Highly recommend.

I am really slow when I read this novel, and I am agree that this is a probing masterpiece-in-miniature of self-reflection and cultural reckoning. You can read it more to get a deeper understanding.

Engaging story of a cranky pair: elderly mother and grown son on a final jaunt only revealed in the end. Wittily told, the story takes them to several
exotic spots, well known to them or about to be discovered, and we are along for the ride, which turns out surprising. Much pathos, many giggles and intriguing characters.

DNF - I thought this might work for me, it had, in theory, all the makings of a book I would adore. Unfortunately, I found the approach to storytelling jumbled & it didn't work for me.

This book was a weaving tale through one characters mind and life. There was a great deal of historical detail and anecdotes that made characters feel real, and even with that the book often managed to convey strong emotions. As someone living in Zürich I particularly found the setting and locations fascinating and familiar.

With prose - and angry disgust - that would strip paint from walls, Kracht unloads his disdain for Nazism, Switzerland, money and more in this brief yet devastating book. How much of the family reminiscence is true? And does it matter? What emerges is a fractious yet important mother/son bond and a wish to both skewer and reject a European inheritance. The details are sublime. Sometimes the plot is a little too whacky. Yet overall this is an unforgettable piece of work that is delivered like a blow to the jaw.

3.5 stars
I admit that my dislike for the two unsympathetic, unreliable and annoying characters, Christian and his mother, might have affected my rating.
From one perspective, this is Kracht’s mastery in creating such characters that evoke disgust in the reader.
Kracht’s writing is good, and I am interested in reading more of his books.
The style, mood and the quirkiness is stronger in this book than the plot.

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht and translated from German by Daniel Bowles is not your average road trip/family redemption novel. It’s a work of autofiction that takes you on a ride through Switzerland and the history of the Kracht family from the sometimes hypocritical, often condescending point of view of the character also named Christian Kracht. Throughout, Kracht is drawn in unsympathetic hues that are goofy enough to make you laugh with and at him. The novel begins with him returning to a city that he hates, Zurich, to fetch his mother for a road trip. She is limited physically by a walker and colostomy bag and psychically by copious amounts of vodka and pills. This is a woman who says things like, “I never leave the house without water,” and yet the only potable within her reach is vodka. These two unsympathetic characters may be the most appealing members of a family lineage of Nazis. Kracht describes both grandfathers as men who were closeted sadomasochists. In the case of his mother’s father, this is laid out very clearly by the discovery of paraphernalia in a wardrobe after his death. Kracht ruminates on this by saying, “it wasn’t an indication of mental health to be able to adapt to such a deeply disturbed family.” That he considers himself well adjusted is part of the joke.

Before heading out on their last hurrah, the mother and son take all her money out of the bank to give away while on the road. On one of their charitable attempts the money ends up floating down a mountain because of a gust of wind. It’s an apt metaphor for their attempted act of charity. Every other person they meet is seen as lesser than, both to mother and son, showing that their epigenetic obsessive heritage is not easy to shed, even for Christian. Any opportunity to give away the money reminds me of watching Content Creators or Livestreamers give away money to a marginalized person on the streets. The money is usually only handed over after the person gives a de facto interview (ie content) and only then does the creator walk away, smiling into the camera to find the next piece of content to get clicks. Similarly, any money offered to strangers comes with some sort of terse exchange or degradation. Kracht and his mother believe that their money makes them superior, and the people they encounter treat them as such. Kracht sees his mother’s ability to talk anyone into almost anything as a sort of magic. Throughout Eurotrash we see flashes of both deep hatred and deep love of the son for his mother.

While on their road trip they roam around in a taxi with a driver who mostly drives silently while he listens to their conversations, at one point suggesting that he may write about what has transpired in his backseat. At this, the mother and son put on a unified front to make it clear that this absolutely will not happen. They give him a little more money, but not too much more. Eurotrash is so devastating in its conclusion, it is a slow descent into realizing the reality of the lengths the son will indulge the mother’s delusions. Eurotrash was a feast to read even in the callousness of its two protagonists, who may not be redeemed to the world but certainly are to each other.