The Capital – Robert Menasse

Today’s post is the latest stop on a blog tour for The Capital by Austrian writer Robert Menasse (translated by Jamie Bulloch), which MacLehose Press are publishing on 21 February. The Capital is a novel of the EU, a panorama of political life in Brussels with a streak of satire. It begins with an escaped pig at large in the city, witnessed by various characters. The pig reappears throughout the novel, tying its different strands together and serving as a constant symbol of the absurd.

The central plot strand of The Capital concerns the upcoming (in the novel) fiftieth anniversary of the European Commission. Fenia Xenopoulou of the Directorate-General for Culture is charge of organising a celebration, though she (along with most others involved) is more interested in it as a means of career advancement. Her assistant has the idea to put Auschwitz at the heart of the event, but other parts of the Commission are not so keen. The wheels gradually start to come off.

I particularly like the way that The Capital balances humour and seriousness. For example, we gain a more poignant perspective from the character of David de Vriend, an Auschwitz survivor:

He wanted to draw up a list, write down the names of all those who had survived alongside him and who he knew to still be alive; he hadn’t received notification of their deaths, at least. Why? He had memories, they thrust themselves forwards. Names would flash up in his mind, he saw faces, heard voices, peered into dark eyes, saw gestures and movements, and he felt the hunger, this chaff cutter of life that devours the body fat, then pulps the muscles and then the soul, which you first discover – if at all – when the hunger becomes a metaphor: the hunger for life.

Alongside the stories of these characters, The Capital includes a trade protest, a murder investigation, and more besides. It all adds up to a multifaceted portrait of a city and an institution.

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The Capital blog tour started yesterday with Stu at Winstonsdad’s Blog. It continues tomorrow, on publication day, at Lizzy’s Literary Life and NB.

Book details

The Capital (2017) by Robert Menasse, tr. Jamie Bulloch (2019), MacLehose Press, 417 pages, hardback (source: review copy provided by publisher).

2 Comments

  1. Oh, I like the look of this, I’ve already emailed my local bookshop asking for it, thank you for the recommendation.

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