I’ve tried to read this twice now, and sadly have to admit that it’s just not for me. Hard to rate it, as perhaps it’s really good and I’m the wrong reader, but I simply couldn’t engage with this digressive, meandering, Proustian and self-indulgent narrative from a man who is going to commit suicide but before he goes wants to record his life story. Which he does here. Endlessly, in long serpentine sentences. Looking for closure, he reminisces about his triumphs and failure – mostly failures – and all the cigars he has smoked over the years, cigars being the source of his family wealth and his own predilection. A lightly fictionalised version of the author’s own life, it’s a book about memory and is indeed erudite and self-aware, but unfortunately is one that failed to keep me reading.

I did not finish this book. A play on Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, although instead of a cookie that sparks reflection, for Brenner, it is cigars. There are some lovely passages buried amidst lots of description of factories, a childhood toy, a road, a conversation. I usually do okay with meandering, digressive prose, but was often lost here. Or didn't care enough to follow the thread. And I never lost the feeling that I was missing something important, key for understanding Brenner and the story itself. I might have done better reading it in print instead of as an ebook.

What a georgous cover!!
Hermann Burger is one of the greatest authors of the German language and this book is translated to English for the first time. Herman Arbogast Brenner, heir of a grand family decides to kill himself (The author of book also died by suicide) but first have to write his life story. To me it feels, in this book Burger is writing about himself, his own suffering in life.

Loved reading this book. The book doesn't paints the titular character in some positive ray of light but paints him as a human being morally grey. The story charts his highs and lows and his childhood days to track his life to conclude what he is and how he is in the present moment. It is also a desperate attempt by the protagonist to relive or feel the emotions of the wonderful moments that he has lived in life, to make sense of some of them and looking for a some sort of closure before his life ends.
Beautiful and poignant. Wrought with dry humour and quite melancholic at times, this is a book I'd recommend.