Description:
About the loneliness of the body and our cannibalistic language of love.
Red (Hunger) is a novel consisting of two stories told in parallel, each desiring the other, which interweave into a single love story. The Story of a Year takes place in 2019: after a separation, a novelist who shares the author's name reflects on his grief and longing in the absence of the person he loves, the person he has lost. The second story, The Story of a Day, is that of the real-life event that came to be known as the Rotenburg cannibalism case. Armin Meiwes and his partner Bernd Brandes had met on the internet: Meiwes was looking for someone to eat, Brandes wanted to be eaten.
Both stories are intertwined, wedged into each other, and refer to each other dialectically; they tell variations of the same story: that the person we desire remains the most absent person of all - because they can never be close enough. Translated from the German, this is a novel for readers of A Lover's Discourse and Monstrilio
Brief description: Vijay Khurana is a writer and translator based between Berlin and London. His work has appeared in NOON, The Guardian, 3: AM Magazine, The Erotic Review and elsewhere. He is currently completing a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at Queen Mary, University of London, researching the disembodied voice and its effect on diaspora, long-distance relationships and loneliness. An excerpt from his translation of the German novel Red (Hunger) by Senthuran Varatharajah appears in the 2024 White Review translation anthology. The Passenger Seat, his first novel, was shortlisted for the 2022 Novel Prize.
Review Quotes:
'A masterpiece.' -Denis Scheck, SWR Lesenswert Quartett
'Senthuran Varatharajah's new novel turns the [Rotenburg] case into sublime literature' -Denis Scheck, ARD Druckfrisch
'Senthuran Varatharajah's provocatively brilliant novel tells of love and cannibalism. Though the author does indeed go into brutal detail, this extreme literary experience is worthwhile. The novel consists of superlative and symmetrical order. Not one line too many, not one line missing. Finely balanced, cold narrative meticulousness, like the standard Goethe set with his love-experiment ELECTIVE AFFINITIES.' - Christian Metz, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)
'Holiness, beauty, and the cruelty of shattering are inscribed in this novel. RED (HUNGER) is absolutely unique. And a solitaire within contemporary German-language literature that is both disturbing and fascinating.' -Shirin Sojitrawalla, Deutschlandfunk
'The color red defines the novel: Blood of love. Blood of war. Blood of a body that consumes and is consumed. This writer and theologian has taken a great risk, and Varatharajah's experiment has succeeded 100%. You won't find a text in contemporary literature with similar intensity.' -Andreas Trojan, Bayerischer Rundfunlk (BR 2)
'Red (Hunger)is a disturbing study, a meditation on the disturbing hunger for love, its nature and its poetic structure. The author's language oscillates between a highly lyrical tone and a relentlessness; it is atmospherically dense with very intense imagery, and at the same time a strong philosophical rigor. This poetically, formally and analytically radical approach makesRed (Hunger)a literary borderline experience, and a literary event'-Claudia Kramatschek, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
'The novel is as beautiful as a mathematical equation.' -Insa Wilke, SWR Lesenswert Quartett
'In his novel Red (Hunger), Senthuran Varatharajah deals in an extraordinary way with interpersonal extremes, with closeness and distance, that we believe to be so familiar.' -Judith von Sternburg, Frankfurter Rundschau
'Red (Hunger)is a sensation, a grandiose venture, and a challenge in the best sense. Senthuran Varatharajah writes about love and grief, and about devotion and pain, with deep wisdom and delicate sensitivity. This novel develops its own poetics, a language of loneliness and speechlessness. A monstrous, a monstrously moving novel.'-Carolin Emcke, author and journalist
'Senthuran Varatharajah breaks our idea of literature. WithRed (Hunger)he translates prose into poetry, language into song, and reality into dream. This novel speaks about the most vulnerable part of love: the desire to devour someone. The language to speak about Red (Hunger)has yet to be found, because Varatharajah comes from a future. And from there, this novel has come to us.'-Karosh Taha, author of In the Belly of the Queen