The Kraus Project
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A hundred years ago, the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus was among the most penetrating and prophetic writers in Europe: a relentless critic of the popular mediaβs manipulation of reality, the dehumanizing machinery of technology and consumerism, and the jingoistic rhetoric of a fading empire. But even though his followers included Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin, he remained something of a lonely prophet, and few people today are familiar with his work. Thankfully, Jonathan Franzen is one of them.
In βThe Kraus Projectβ, Franzen not only presents and annotates his definitive new translations of Kraus, with supplementary notes from the Kraus scholar Paul Reitter and the Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann. In Franzen Kraus has found his match: a novelist unafraid to voice unpopular opinions strongly, a critic capable of untangling Krausβs often dense arguments.
Painstakingly wrought, strikingly original in form, βThe Kraus Projectβ is a feast of thought, passion and literature.
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Jonathan Franzen was born in 1959. He has lived in Boston, Spain, New York, Colorado Springs and Philadelphia. His novels are βThe Twenty-Seventh Cityβ, βStrong Motionβ, βThe Correctionsβ and βFreedomβ. He is also the author of two collections of non-fiction, βHow To Be Aloneβ and βFarther Awayβ and βThe Discomfort Zoneβ, a memoir. His fiction and non-fiction appear frequently in the βNew Yorkerβ and βHarperβsβ, and he was named one of the best American novelists under forty by βGrantaβ and the βNew Yorkerβ. He lives in New York City.
