Eurotrash, by Christian Kracht

An eighty year old with a dark, wartime past goes on a quirky road trip with her son. 

​In this work of autofiction, narrator Christian Kracht, famous for his novel Faserland as well as other works, reunites with his octogenarian mother on a road trip of sorts through the Swiss Alps. Middle-aged Christian’s mother - we don’t learn her name - has invested heavily in the arms industry and reaped a whirlwind. Taking her medication with good swigs of vodka,  and sporting a colostomy bag that needs frequent changing, she has withdrawn tens of thousands from her bank account and stuffed the cash in cheap plastic bags, determined to indiscriminately give it away. 

As the two take taxi rides around the Swiss Alps, they go over their past together, trudging through a murky and shameful family history. Christian’s grandfather - his mother’s father - was a member of the Nazi’s SS. 

Eurotrash is a dark, rancid comedy about wealth and privilege. Kracht provides a razor sharp skewering of decadent, self-regarding elites, whose money has come from a long line of misery. There is a sense of ennui and terribly bad taste that goes hand in hand with this ruling class, who don’t do introspection. Rather they live gaudy lives of depressing excess. Worse still, when their pasts are excavated the skeletons of fascism and dirty capitalism are found. 

Christian Kracht is a Swiss writer. Eurotrash was first published in 2021 and now gets an English translation by Daniel Bowles. A novel that is short and acerbic, with a powerful underlying morality.

Eurotrash, by Christian Kracht. Translated by Daniel Bowles. Published by Serpent's Tail. $26.99

Review by Chris Saliba

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