Chasing Homer Good luck, and nothing else : Odysseus's cave

In this latest from the challenging Krasznahorkai, winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature for Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize for his oeuvre, a hunted creature flees frantically southward through Europe, seeking to escape death. With full-color paintings by Max Neumann and a rattlingly percussive score by Szilveszter Miklós associated with each chapter and accessed via QR codes. Copyright 2021 Library Journal.

Krasznahorkai's strange and engrossing novella (after Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming) reads like a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie dreamed up by Beckett and Kafka. Killers with an unknown motive are chasing the narrator, who has become by necessity an autodidact of survival skills, through Croatia along the Adriatic Coast. At a tourist bar in Korcula, holed up after being chilled to the bone by ominous gusts of the "Bora," the hero overhears a tour guide convince a couple to let him lead them on a tour of Mljet, a small island believed by its inhabitants to be the true location of Odysseus's sojourn with Calypso, and follows them there. The hero's account up to this point has been filled with reports of fast, chaotic, unpredictable movement to ward off the hunters, and of pledges to resist the animalistic pleasures in life, which would lead to doom, but at Korcula, something changes. Batki's translation exquisitely captures the grace underlying the hero's frenetic mindset ("I must plunge, from the edge of a moment right into its midst, just like some Moby-Dick, or a dying butterfly between two flower petals"), as do the vignettes scored by free jazz drummer Szilveszter Miklós for each chapter (accessible via QR codes that appear in the text). Whether on a large canvas or small, Krasznahorkai never ceases to impress. (Nov.) Copyright 2021 Publishers Weekly.

"In this thrilling chase narrative, a hunted being escapes certain death at breakneck speed-careening through Europe, heading blindly South. Faster and faster, escaping the assassins, our protagonist flies forward, blending into crowds, adjusting to terrains, hopping on and off ferries, always desperately trying to stay a step ahead of certain death: the past did not exist, only what was current existed-a prisoner of the instant, rushing into this instant, an instant that had no continuation ... Krasznahorkai-celebrated for the exhilarating energy of his prose-outdoes himself in Chasing Homer. And this unique collaboration boasts beautiful full-color paintings by Max Neumann and-reaching out of the book proper-the wildly percussive music of Szilveszter Miklâos scored for each chapter (to be accessed by the reader via QR codes)"--

A classic escape nightmare, Chasing Homer is sped on not only by Krasznahorkai’s signature velocity, but also by a unique musical score and intense illustrations