Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai, Translated by Ottilie Mulzet (Paperback)

Baron Béla Wenckheim, a gentle, Myshkin-like figure who fled to Buenos Aires and ran up casino debts there, comes home to his small Hungarian town near the end of his life, hoping to find Marika, his high-school sweetheart. His return sets off a frenzy of gossip, swindles and local politics in a place both grim and absurd, while a famous moss scientist known as the Professor tries to shield his mind from thought in a remote shack.

The novel completes László Krasznahorkai's four-part cycle and won the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature; in 2025 the author received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Darkly comic and written in long, rolling sentences, it rewards patient readers of serious European fiction.

• Award: 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature
• Cycle: the closing part of the author's four-novel sequence
• Translation: by Ottilie Mulzet
• Tone: darkly comic and apocalyptic

Details

• Author: László Krasznahorkai
• Translator: Ottilie Mulzet
• Publisher: New Directions
• Format: Paperback, 576 pages
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9780811239707