This is a weird but somehow wonderful confection of ideas that brings together a collage made up of Heinrich von Kleist, the lyric 'I', the decision about the Nazi's Final Solution, the old East Berlin, the Matrix, a TV show that sounds like The Shield, paranoia (or is it?) and the re-emergence of alt-right politics that culminate in the 2016 US election. Somehow Kunzru - just about - makes it hold together though, I'd have to say, a touch more coherence would have been preferable for me.

What unifies it all is the voice of the narrator whose struggles with personal freedom, and subjectivity as literary form lead him in strange directions. Throughout, this book manages to be beguilingly intelligent and also just a bit bonkers - but in a good way! I certainly felt that a closer acquaintance with German literature and thought might have served me well as some of the references, I fear, were not picked up by me.

All the same, this is clever but has heart - definitely a book for our times.

This book is a spectacle, a wild romp, insanely intelligent, full of references and meta-levels and ideas - just give Hari Kunzru this year's Booker, will ya! Our narrator and protagonist is an unnamed NY-based writer struggling to produce new work - this is starting to affect his marriage, so when he obtains a stipend for a fellowship at the Deuter Center in Berlin, he perceives it as an opportunity to overcome his troubles by distancing himself from his usual environment. His application stated that he wants to do research on the subjectivity of lyric poets, but his own self falls apart as his stay turns into a disaster: He is confronted with the Center's oppressive policies of transparency and openness, disturbed by the destiny of a cleaning woman who was tormented by and working for the Stasi, haunted by the recurring sight of a poor refugee and his daughter, and when he finally ventures into the heart of the city, he meets an alt-right activist who plays with his mind - or doesn't he?

Our unreliable narrator starts from a place of mental instability and vulnerability and is again and again confronted with ideologies and belief systems that challenge his world views, namely the importance of human dignity, which drives him mad: He is shaken to the core by the loss of moral certainties, going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, liberal and alt-right filter bubbles, fake news and real threats to democracy and the values of the Enlightenment. (Needless to say that at some point, Trump will enter the narrative.) There is a real shift happening, there are real dangers to the way of life we know, the values we hold dear - Kunzru explores the friction between understandable fear and paranoia and how people can be pushed over the edge, drowning in quicksand, questioning the very concept of reality.

The text operates with an abundance of motifs and themes and cleverly connects them, thus creating an exciting narrative puzzle: The founder of the (fictional) Deuter Center, a former Wehrmacht general, became a successful entrepreneur in postwar Germany, rich and lauded by politicians, his signature product being a white color with extreme opacity (can you cover up your war crimes in the name of white supremacy by inventing an opaque white color? And btw: There really is a well-known German company named Deuter, and they produce backpacks, so you can, you know, carry around your baggage - Hari Kunzru, evil genius). The premises Kunzru describes in the context of the Deuter Center are actually those of the American Academy where the author spent some time; it is located at the Wannsee, so where the Wannsee conference was held and Reinhard Heydrich proposed the "final solution to the Jewish question" - history is haunting the people we meet in this story (the GDR and its system of surveillance and oppression also plays a pivotal role).

While sitting in his room and struggling with the Center's ideologically rigid regulations that strictly monitor his output and contributions, the protagonist becomes obsessed with Heinrich von Kleist, who shot himself at the Wannsee in a murder-suicide plot with Henriette Vogel. Again and again, he wanders to Kleist's nearby grave, ponders the poet's hysteric disposition and contemplates his work, namely The Prince of Homburg and The Marquise of O - as the story goes on, he partly starts to mirror Kleist, and while the novella isn't explicitly mentioned, Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas seems to be a steady companion piece to the narrator's upcoming crusade (you could also make a case for The Broken Jug). The many references to German literature (including Goethe's über-famous Wanderer's Nightsong II, e.g.) and politics (not only to WW II and the GDR, but also to the Wirtschaftswunder and the RAF, e.g.) can easily be decoded and (re-)contextualized by Germans, and I'm curious how readers from other countries will perceive it. Hari Kunzru does a fantastic job working with these themes and depicting Germany, IMHO.

Another pastime of the narrator is watching a nihilistic cop show which, as it turned out, was created by Anton, the alt-right activist who will become his nemesis: The show, the narrator muses, is intended to prepare us all for the upcoming world without empathy - which made me think of the Alfred Hugenberg who turned the Universum Film AG (UFA) into one of the biggest propaganda tools of the Nazis. And where does the protagonist encounter the enigmatic alt-right troll? Of course: At the Berlinale. The narrator becomes obsessed with Anton, his opinions mess with his mind, and he starts to unravel...

The protagonist is half-Indian and married to a woman with Japanese heritage, just like Kunzru (his wife is writer Katie Kitamura) - and in a way, most of us will probably feel connected to the narrator, who has to witness how people who despise his values (empathy, honesty, solidarity etc.) and celebrate a dog-eat-dog mentality in which debasing others is a legitimate display of power gain more and more power (hello, Trump-GOP and AfD). Will the Enlightenment be reversed, will our democracies collapse (again)? Kunzru meditates about the connection between the human penchant for mysticism (Norse mythology, German Romanticism, etc.), the power of manipulation and the disorientation we are currently experiencing. The title-giving "red pill" refers to the concept explained in "The Matrix" (the narrator also talks about the world as "simulation"): Morpheus offers Neo the choice between a blue pill (blissful ignorance) and a red pill (true reality) - you can watch the scene here.

I could go on and on about the many ideas the author has played out in this work - this is a fascinating, smart, timely read. I hope many people will pick it up and Kunzru will get lots of recognition for it.