The Last Wolf & Herman

On finishing reading The Last Wolf and Herman, I initially gave the book a four star rating because, while I loved both the novellas - or actually all three because Herman comprises of two novellas each telling the same story, but from wildly different perspectives - it took a while for everything to settle in my mind and, as Virginia Woolf so eloquently put it (in How Should One Read A Book?), for the true shape of the book to emerge. I saw that The Last Wolf and Herman had won the Man Booker International Prize and I had wondered how much that was influenced by the complex nature of Krasznahorkai's prose. The Last Wolf, for example, is a novella in one sentence! Admittedly it is a superlatively long sentence which, for someone like me who also tends to write in overlong sentences, would have been a perfect rebuke to my school English teacher, however it was daunting to begin with. Once I got into the style though I loved The Last Wolf and the single sentence device works wonderfully to illustrate how the babbling Professor is semi-drunkenly recounting his fantastic tale to a bored bartender who cannot escape him. I could clearly picture the Berlin bar and appreciated the extreme contrast between that claustrophobic setting and that of the wide Extremadura landscapes with which I am familiar although, sadly, only since the autopistas arrived.

Herman is an inspired idea for a mirrored tale and I didn't realise, until I came to write my review, just how long ago this story was written. It has a timelessness to it that really works alongside its portrait of a former animal trapper who goes rogue when he has a revelation about the life he has led up to that point and a way in which he can make amends. Krasznahorkai gets deeply into Herman's mental state so, while this is a grim tale due to the cruelties described, I found myself beginning to actually care about Herman - until the viewpoint switches anyway!

The more I think about these stories, the more I realise just how accomplished they are! Well worth a read for fans of quirky, darker fiction and experimental writing.

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; www.knowledgelost.org/book-reviews/genre/literary-fiction/the-last-wolf-herman-by-laszlo-krasznahorkai/