Two unlikely friends embark on a road trip across Europe to Morocco to meet a healer and defy the Danish welfare state, pursued metaphorically and literally by Death himself.

This was like a Danish, more adult version of The Fundamentals of Caring. It’s the story of two unlikely friends – one of whom is chronically ill, while the other is in the middle of a sort of directionless mid-life crisis – going on a road trip and visiting some unconventional locations along the way. Very similar plots and the same darkly comic vibe, but a different location and more mature characters.

I liked both Asger and Waldemar. Their relationship felt very organic and believable, and I enjoyed the way they played off each other. I also thoroughly enjoyed the mysterious Death character, and also appreciated that his role wasn’t too central, so as not to tip the book too far into fantasy. I did have to google some of the people and places mentioned, as I’m not at all familiar with Danish popular culture or Denmark in general. Some of the references were lost on me, but this didn’t detract from my enjoyment on the whole.

The writing style is smooth, and surprisingly detailed for such a short book, and translated excellently. Death Drive an Audi is a fast-paced and highly entertaining novel, in my opinion. I sped through it in about two days, between work.

I requested this book because of the amazing cover art and the appealing title. I was so excited to start reading it, but I couldn't get into the story.

Darkly funny, great summer read!

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

Well translated but I couldn't get on with it.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for review.

I could not finish this title. I did not warm to the characters or the way the location was described.

This is one of the strangest books I've read. I only read it as one of my categories in a reading challenge is a book translated from another language. I think a younger reader would have got more out of this. I did find it darkly amusing with some real poignant moments and a deal of pathos, but it was mostly just strange! I found myself asking "why?" a lot. At no point did I contemplate giving up mind you, so I was keen to discover what actually happened. #netgalley #deathdrivesanaudi

OK, I was drawn in by the title, the appealing cover, and the promise of this book being 'wildly, flamingly funny'. I really wanted to like it, but to be honest I found it disappointing.

Given the title, I kind of felt cheated that Death doesn't turn up at all until a significant way into the book - about 40% in, and then only makes a couple of brief appearances after that, and not always even in the Audi. Death really is no more than a drive-on-part in this story.

A large chunk at the beginning of the book is taken up with a slow, grinding, depressing description of slow, grinding, depressing council estate life. Even once they get going on the road trip, it's more a depressing sequence of disappointing experiences than it is a string of hilarious misadventures.

Wildly, flamingly funny? Descriptions of dismal, disappointing life experiences don't really fit that description. I'll snap up anything humorous, the darker the better, but this just left me cold.

Bizarrely, I can see it possibly working as a film, where it has more potential for the humour being visual. But as words on a page, it didn't really excite.

Death drives an Audi is a pleasure to read, reminding me of the warmth of John Kennedy Toole's A confederacy of dunces. The complete self-destruction by Asger of his happy affluent life leads him to Waldemar and a journey of discovery. The world imagined by Foss is so vivid that you feel that you are immersed in the claustrophobic housing estate inhabited by Waldemar. The crushing mixture of illnesses heaped upon Waldemar would limit a lesser man, but coupled with Asger as his new carer the duo begin to spread their wings and live a life of possibility. An inspirational trip to Morocco in search of a shaman is driven by the sadness of a one way journey, but is written with such joy and adventure that even the chasing headlights of the pursuing Audi can not dampen the reader's desire to read on to the end..

I was initially drawn to Death Drives an Audi by Krisitan Bang Foss because of its intriguing and somewhat chaotic cover. The summary promised a darkly funny satirical commentary on disability and the welfare state, and I have to say the book did live up to that premise. The book follows Waldemar , a disabled man and Asger his carer who fell into the job having been let go from the advertising agency where he worked. At first the two make for an unlikely pairing but as they get to know and understand each other , a real friendship develops, and when Waldemar is determined to get to Morocco to see a miracle healer, Asger is determined to do what ever it takes to get him there. So begins an epic road trip in a second hand VW van that will take them from Denmark across Europe to Morocco with a few unexpected adventures along the way. I have to say I enjoyed the dark comedy and thought it worked really well, something that can be very challenging when dealing with a translated work.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

I enjoyed this book immensely. It was refreshingly different from anything else I had read in a long time - perhaps ever - and written in a very appealing style.

It combines emotional warmth, ugly reality and a bit of magical realism, suffused with a tasteful degree humour and some pleasing and often surprising descriptions.

Whilst I have not read the original language version, it is fairly evident that it was slightly let down in places by this English translation. Overall, though, the translation worked smoothly and did not detract from the clearly excellent original writing style.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review – thanks as always to Netgalley for sending this to me!

I’ve been looking to read more translated fiction, and this sounded like an amazing place to start. Two friends on a road-trip pursued – both literally and metaphorically – by Death? The concept had me hooked from the moment I read the (rather sparse) blurb. Unfortunately, I felt like this book kind of failed to deliver on what was promised.

Our main character, whose name I instantly forgot, is in a rut, recently divorced and with no idea what he’s doing with his life. He ends up accepting a job as a carer for a disabled man, and for approximately forty percent of the book, the two of them sit around drinking, ruminating on how depressing their surroundings are, and killing time. After about a hundred pages of not much happening, the promised presence – a road trip, pursued by Death – finally comes to pass, and the two friends set off on a pilgrimage to visit a faith healer in Morocco.

It took almost forty percent of the book for us to actually see Death for the first time, and by the sixty percent mark, he/it has shown up exactly two times. Considering that I picked this book up entirely out of a sense of intrigue for the idea of Death pursuing two men across the world, I feel pretty let down, and the slow pace has left me disinclined to push forward any further. The book is slow, desolate, and honestly I’ve found it a massive drag to get this far, and I sincerely doubt that it’s going to pick up speed enough to be worth continuing with it.
The writing is fine, the characters are sort of interesting and fairly sympathetic, but overall I feel pretty unimpressed by the book and I have zero motivation to finish it. Because of this, I’m going to have to call time on this one.

DNF’d at 60%.

This novel, translated from Danish, is part fun road trip adventure and part tragicomedy on death and bad life choices. The narrator ruins his advertising career with a silly mistake and ends up working as a carer for a young man. But while Foss treats disability with care in Death Drives an Audi, he does less well on poverty which gets mocked in ways that felt mean spirited to me. It’s paced well, inspiring a sense of dread from the outset so you can be certain that nothing the protagonist and the man he looks after have planned will go smoothly. It’s dark and it’s fun.

Death Drives An Audi follows Asger, a disgraced former advertising executive who drinks too much, eats too much and walks too little. When his benefits are cut off Asger is forced to get a new job, and so becomes a carer to 22-year old Waldemar who is so sick that it’s a wonder he’s still alive. The two form an unlikely friendship and together set off on a road trip to seek out a healer in Morocco in the hope he will heal Waldemar.

Death Drives An Audi is a short, sharp satire with elements of black comedy thrown in for good measure. Kristian Bang Foss’s reflection on Stentofte and it’s residents coupled with Asger’s disdain offers a scathing commentary on how effective the welfare system is at supporting those in need. These insights are very much in sharp focus at the start of the novel. Asger’s easy fall from grace, his observation of Stentofte, the face off over beef in Aldi. These early scenes were in some places laugh out loud funny but sad, too.

As the book progresses and moves away from Stentofte into Morocco, things get darker and progressively less comedic. There is a sense that both Asger and Waldemar are each running from something, rather than towards it. As their relationship progresses into an unlikely friendship, you can’t help but feel sad for them both and the things they learn as they go.

The writing, which is translated by Caroline Waight, is poetic and detailed. It clearly sets the scene as we follow the two men from Denmark to Morocco, helping us to understand the landscapes and their importance to the story. Having said that, I couldn’t let myself become overly invested. The beginning was intriguing and the anecdotes with their dark humour kept me reading. From the start of the road trip onwards, it changed for me and didn’t feel as immersive. But the ending is both a whisper and a bang that hits you squarely in the chest and leaves you a bit breathless.

Overall, the book offers up a sharp social satire interwoven with black comedy and more than enough heartache to leave it echoing within you for quite a while after reading it.

I requested this because I was so intrigued by the title. I enjoyed it very much, although I found the last part dragged a little. Beautifully written, even in translation.

Fantastic and funny. This dark comedy I has so much to give. I loved the growing unlikely friendship between the main characters and the humour was perfect, a little dark and risqué in places but perfectly fitting for the plot. A beautiful book that will make you laugh.

A satire on the inadequacies of the Danish welfare state.

Translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight.

Fortysomething advertising exec, Asger, loses job and his life begins to fall apart. Disabled Waldemar needs a carer. Together, they embark on a road trip to Morocco to find the medical help Waldemar requires.

As with every odyssey, it is the people and events met along the way which enliven the story, and help the protagonist develop as a character. Not as hilarious as the blurb would have you believe, nevertheless, the digs at various elements of society, from Aldi-shoppers to freeganarians to bullfighting to bureaucracy, are well-observed.

My thanks to NetGalley and Parthian Books for the ARC.

Kristian Bang Foss's comic road-novel gets off to a flying start with that title. Death, you can imagine, probably does drive an Audi. The rest of the less fortunate mortals found in the Danish writer's hugely entertaining and thoughtful prize-winning satire, drive a somewhat less glamorous vehicle, although they all seem to be heading in the same ominous direction. Which - in geographical terms at least - is away from a grim housing estate in Copenhagen to the apparently rather more exotic destination of Morocco. There are however many incidents along the way,

This kind of journey certainly didn't figure in the plans of Asger, who is an advertising executive when things suddenly take a turn for the worse during the 2008 financial crisis. Living in Copenhagen with Sara and her daughter Amalie, it all starts going downhill after an advertising campaign quickly thrown together at the last minute goes badly wrong and Asger finds himself in quick succession out of work, out of home and out of luck. He doesn't cope well with the adjustment in lifestyle, putting on weight, drinking too much through late nights and rapidly finding himself running out of money.

He's about to find out that there are worse places you could be. Taking a job as carer for the disabled, he is assigned to Waldemar, a 22 year old man with so many illnesses and conditions that it's improbable that he is still alive. The last carer didn't last and you begin to see why. It's not that Waldemar is particularly demanding - although understandably he has his moments - but the insalubrious district of Stentofte, where "hatred oozed out of the concrete" of the housing blocks, does tend to drag your spirits down. Like Waldemar, it seems a place without hope.

In Asger and Kristin Bang Foss's view, life there however seems to consist of a series of grimly comic situations. Asger's new indignities include shopping at Aldi with the hopeless living on benefits and state care. It's an education as well, as everyone, including Waldemar, seems to know how to work the system and gain the most from the benefits and subsidies that are available. Much as Asger used to know his around tax deductibles, as the novel satirically observes, and initial disdain for a life scrabbling though one miserable day after another turns gradually to grudging admiration.

Whatever the reason is, Asger and Waldemar hit it off. They have the same tastes in trash reality TV and same sense of humour. Where they don't initially see eye-to-eye is in a hair-brained idea Waldemar has to travel to Morocco to see a healer Torbi el Mekki. Realising it's a chance for both of them to get out of Stentofte even if it means inevitably ending in disappointment, they manage to get sponsorship, buy a VW van and set off across Europe from Denmark to warmer climates and warmer people. They just have to keep an eye out along the way for a certain driver of an Audi.

Death Drives an Audi (that's a bit of a give-away) is a deceptively light read. It breezily follows two unlikely figures on a typical road-movie adventure, a journey of self-discovery and amusing incidents. It's not hard however to see the slightly darker vein of satire underlying the book, hitting the mark very astutely on the indignities that are endured by the forgotten and neglected in western society. The writing - superbly translated by Caroline Waight - is also an absolute delight, never relying on a simple metaphor but finding unique and colourful turns of phrase to describe the misery and the beauty, the absurd and the ineffable.

Death Drives an Audi by Kristin Bang Foss received the European Union Prize for Literature in 2013 and is published in English for the first time by Parthian Books. Its satire of the post-financial crisis on those less able to bear the impact is no less relevant today in the time of growing use of foodbanks, but there is also some fine writing, great characters and plenty of bizarre incident and situations with a Nordic sense of humour and absurdity that makes this just a wonderful read.

A moving story of a developing friendship between Asger, a young man who has lost his job and kicked out of his family home, and Waldemar, a disabled man living on the Danish welfare state. Asger takes a job caring for him which leads to a road trip to Morocco to get medical help for Waldemar.

At the same time the tale is both tragic, and funny and yet the developing friendship is beautiful.

An interesting and darkly funny look at disability and the welfare state. As relevant now as it was when it was first published in 2012