Faserland

Faserland

Author	Christian Kracht
Original title	Faserland
Language	German
Genre	Pop Literature
Published	1995
Publication place	Germany, Switzerland
Pages	165
ISBN	3462024078
OCLC	33834433
Followed by	1979

Faserland is the debut novel by Christian Kracht, published in 1995. It is considered to have triggered the new wave of German pop literature. It is the swan song of the generation of the 80s, whose characteristics are so carefully described in the book that it has been called the "cult novel of a generation". Critics often compare the book to those of the American author Bret Easton Ellis.

Faserland has been translated into Russian, Czech, Latvian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Korean, Romanian, French, Ukrainian, Swedish, Norwegian and Hebrew.

Title

The title allows many different interpretations. Directly translated, it means "land of fibers" a possible reference to the narrator's recurring fixation on clothing, in particular his Barbour jacket. Other meanings that could be read into the title are the verbs zerfasern ("to fray"), referring to the fraying of society, and faseln ("to prattle on" or "to blather").

It also is similar to the English word "Fatherland" spoken with a German accent, and hence was interpreted as an allusion to Robert Harris' 1992 novel Fatherland, which presented an alternative history setting in which Nazi Germany won World War II.

Plot

The picaresque novel tells the story of a journey. The unnamed narrator is in his late twenties and is the son of a wealthy family, and travels south from the northernmost tip of Germany down to the Bodensee and onwards to Zürich. He is more an involuntary observer than participant in the events that unfold. He begins in Sylt and heads through Hamburg, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Munich, Meersburg, and finally Zürich. In each of these places he has experiences with decadent excesses in the form of alcohol, drugs, and sexual encounters. These excesses are not enjoyed by the participants, but are more an expression of their hopelessness. The protagonist sees the downfall of his generation – a close friend commits suicide – and experiences his own downfall. He also reflects on unhappy memories of youth.

His odyssey, which can be interpreted as either a search for meaning or a long goodbye, ends on Lake Zürich: the references to Greek mythology (Charon, Obolus, and Hades) suggest the narrator's suicide in the middle of the lake. Another interpretation sees the crossing to the other shore as a sign of the homosexuality of the narrator. Neither has been confirmed by Kracht. The ending is left open.

References

• Biendarra, Anke S. (2002). "Der Erzahler als 'Popmoderner Flaneur' in Christian Krachts Roman Faserland". German Life and Letters. 55 (2): 164–179. doi:10.1111/1468-0483.00222.
• Beuse, Stefan (2001). "154 schöne weiße leere Blätter. Christian Krachts "Faserland"". Der deutsche Roman der Gegenwart. München: Freund/ Freund. pp. 150–155. ISBN 9783825222512.
• Finlay (2004). "‚Dann wäre Deutschland wie das Wort Neckarauen': Surface, Superficiality and Globalisation in Christian Kracht's Faserland". In Taberner, Stuart (ed.). German Literature in the Age of Globalisation. Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press. pp. 189–208. ISBN 9781441131775.
• Krüger, Meike (2006). "Spuren des kollektiven Gedächtnisses im Roman Faserland von Christian Kracht". Växjö: Scripta Minora. Retrieved 18 February 2020.
• Langston, Richard (2006). "Escape from Germany: Disappearing Bodies and Postmodern Space in Christian Kracht's Prose". The German Quarterly. 79 (1): 50–70. doi:10.1111/j.1756-1183.2006.tb00033.x. JSTOR 27675884.
• Steltz, Christian (2005). "Wie schreibt man sich in die Geschichte ein? Eine gattungspoetische Betrachtung von Christian Krachts Romandebüt "Faserland"" (PDF). In Schlicht, Corinna (ed.). Lebensentwürfe. Literatur- und filmwissenschaftliche Anmerkungen. Autoren im Kontext. Vol. 7. Oberhausen: Karl Maria Laufen. pp. 33–48. ISBN 9783874682138.