The Last Wolf & Herman

by Laszlo Krasznahorkai

John Batki (Translator) and George Szirtes (Translator)

The Last Wolf, translated by George Szirtes, features a classic, obsessed Krasznahorkai narrator, a man hired to write (by mistake, by a glitch of fate) the true tale of the last wolf of Extremadura, a barren stretch of Spain. This miserable experience (being mistaken for another, dragged about a cold foreign place, appalled by a species’ end) is narrated—all in a single sentence—as a sad looping tale, a howl more or less, in a dreary wintry Berlin bar to a patently bored bartender.

The Last Wolf is Krasznahorkai in a maddening nutshell—with the narrator trapped in his own experience (having internalized the extermination of the last creature of its kind and “locked Extremadura in the depths of his own cold, empty, hollow heart”)—enfolding the reader in the exact same sort of entrapment to and beyond the end, with its first full-stop period of the book.

Herman, “a peerless virtuoso of trapping who guards the splendid mysteries of an ancient craft gradually sinking into permanent oblivion,” is asked to clear a forest’s last “noxious beasts.” In Herman I: the Game Warden, he begins with great zeal, although in time he “suspects that maybe he was ‘on the wrong scent.’” Herman switches sides, deciding to track entirely new game...

In Herman II: The Death of a Craft, the same situation is viewed by strange visitors to the region. Hyper-sexualized aristocratic officers on a very extended leave are enjoying a saturnalia with a bevy of beauties in the town nearest the forest. With a sense of effete irony, they interrupt their orgies to pitch in with the manhunt of poor Herman, and in the end, “only we are left to relish the magic bouquet of this escapade...” Translated by John Batki. 

• ISBN10: 0811226085
• ISBN13: 9780811226080
• Publish Date: 7 October 2016 (first published 27 September 2016)
• Publish Status: Inactive
• Out of Print: 9 March 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 128
• Language: English

Reviews

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

László Krasznahorkai is one of those authors that has been on my radar for a long time. Not because I always wondered how to pronounce his name (I know now) but because this Hungarian author’s books were always labeled as difficult or demanding. I like a challenge but I thought I might start with something small. I was told that The Last Wolf was a good introduction to László Krasznahorkai and it was not because of the blurb by Sjón on the cover. The edition pairs two novellas together, The Last Wolf and Herman.

The Last Wolf is a 70 page long sentence, which means you really need to read it in one sitting. I myself turned back to page one and reread the whole thing the next day. Not because it was dense (it is) but because I was captivated by the writing. How often are you able to find a sentence that long that flows so smoothly?

The novella is about a failed philosophy professor who is asked to write about the last wolf in the Spanish region of Extremadura. Although it is another who is conveying the tale to a bartender in Berlin. This narrative is an interesting journey, full of philosophical musing and some self-loathing. It left me wondering if László Krasznahorkai just wrote a satirical jab at himself. It is hard to say more about these stories, you really need to experience them yourself.

While Herman does share similarities, they were originally published twenty-three years apart. Told in two parts, firstly you learn about a master trapper who is clearing a forest of ‘noxious beasts’ in ‘The Game Warden’. While the other story (‘Death of a Craft’) is from the perspective of visitors to the same region. Trust me, these two parts sound like they do not go together but they do.

I am finding it really hard to talk about book, not just because both stories are dense and require many rereads but because it is difficult to express what happens in the books. I am not interested in giving a plot summary, you just have to experience László Krasznahorkai and this does seem like a good place to start. László Krasznahorkai won the last Man Book International Prize in 2015 before it was reincarnated into its current from. Originally the prize was awarded to an author for his entire body of work and he was recognised for his achievement in fiction on the world stage.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/book-reviews/genre/literary-fiction/the-last-wolf-herman-by-laszlo-krasznahorkai/