Die Toten

Christian Kracht’s novel The Dead takes us right into the glistening, feverish years of the Weimar Republic, when modernist culture, especially in film was in its first full prime. In Berlin, a Swiss film director is egged on by a certain Siegfried Kracauer and a certain Lotte Eisner to try to persuade the UFA tycoon Hugenberg to finance a film, a horror film to be precise, in Japan. This overlaps with similar plans in the empire on the other side of the world. Together with it they want to stand up to the emerging Hollywood empire …