The Capital - Robert Menasse

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Résumé :
Brussels. A panorama of tragic heroes, manipulative losers, involuntary accomplices. In his new novel, Robert Menasse spans a narrative arc between the times, the nations, the inevitable and the irony of fate, between petty bureaucracy and big emotions.

Fenia Xenapoulou is facing a career setback. She has been promoted to the Department of Culture by the Directorate General - no budget, no power, no reputation. So the Big Jubilee Project comes just at the right time, to revamp the image of the European Commission. Her Austrian personal assistant Martin Susmann suggests proclaiming Auschwitz as the birthplace of the European Commission. Fenia is thrilled, but she has neglected to take the other European nations into account.

Inspector Brunfaut is in a tricky situation too, his murder case has been suppressed at the highest level. Luckily he's friends with the I.T. whizz at the Brussels Police Department, who gains access to the secret files of the public prosecutor's office. Matek, the Polish hitman, knows nothing of this when he makes his escape. But he does know that he shot the wrong guy, and for Matek, who would rather have been ordained a priest, this is serious. And what about the pig farmers who take to the streets of the city with pitchforks to protest about existing trade restrictions that block the export of pigs' ears to China . . .

Biographie:
Robert Menasse was born in Vienna in 1954 and studied there before moving to Brazil, where he lived for six years as a professor of literature at the University of S?o Paulo. He is the author of several novels translated into English, including Wings of Stone and Reverse Thrust, and of a work of non-fiction, Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits: Or Why the Democracy Given to Us Must Become One We Fight for (2016). In 2017 he was awarded the German Book Prize for Die Hauptstadt (The Capital).