In 1902, a radical vegetarian and nudist from Nuremberg named August Engelhardt set sail for what was then called the Bismarck Archipelago, in German New Guinea. His destination: the island Kabakon. His goal: to establish a colony based on worship of the sun and coconuts. His malnourished body was found on the beach on Kabakon in 1919; he was forty-three years old.
Christian Kracht's Imperium uses the outlandish details of Engelhardt's life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism and its fundamental foolishness. Engelhardt is at once a pitiable, misunderstood outsider and a rigid ideologue, and his misguided notions of purity and his spiral into madness presage the horrors of the mid-twentieth century.
Playing with the tropes of classic adventure tales such as Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, Kracht's novel, an international bestseller, is funny, bizarre, shocking, and poignant. His allusions are misleading, his historical time line is twisted, his narrator is unreliable--and the result is a novel that is a cabinet of mirrors, a maze pitted with trapdoors.
View a guide of selected resources (PDF) on this topic available through the Libraries.
The Art of Anatheism
Edited by Richard Kearney
& Matthew Clemente
Grand Challenges for Social Work and Society
Edited by Rowena Fong
& James Lubben
& Richard Barth
The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation
by Gerald C. Kane
& Anh Nguyen Phillips, Jonathan R. Copulsky, & Garth R. Andrus
Lebanon's Jewish Community: Fragments of Lives Arrested
by Franck Salameh
Jesuit Philosophy on the Eve of Modernity
by Cristiano Casalini
Televising Restoration Spain
by Wan Sonya Tang
Various Articles
by Joseph F. Quinn, Ph.D
A Lily Blooms in Winter
by Alston Conley
Navigating Toward Adulthood: A Theology of Ministry with Adolescents
by Theresa O'Keefe
The History and Philosophy of Science: A Reader
by Daniel McKaughan
& Holly VandeWall
Motherhood across Borders: Immigrants and Their Children in Mexico and New York
by Dr. Gabrielle Oliveira
Redefining Retirement For Nurses; Finding Meaning In Retirement
by Patricia A. Tabloski
& Joanne Evans
Holy Spirit: Setting the World on Fire
Co-Edited by Richard Lennan
& Nancy Pineda-Madrid
Learn to Program using Swift for iOS Development
by John Gallaugher
Technology and Engagement: Making Technology Work for First-Generation College Students
by Heather T. Rowan-Kenyon
& Ana M. Martínez Alemán
& Mandy Savitz-Romer, PhD
Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics
by Peter Krause
& Timothy Crawford
Why You Eat What You Eat
by Rachel Herz
Antique Coptic Textiles in McMullen Museum
by Nancy Netzer
Listening to Early Modern Catholicism: Perspectives from Musicology
Edited by Michael Noone
& Daniele V. Filippi
Nazi Law: From Nuremberg to Nuremberg
Edited by John J. Michalczyk
Academic–Practitioner Relationships: Developments, Complexities and Opportunities
by Jean M. Bartunek
& Jane McKenzie
Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win
by Peter Krause
Father Blake on his life long involvement with Film Studies and his twenty-two years at Boston College
by Richard Blake S.J. Ph.D.
Written for Our Instruction: Theological and Spiritual Riches in Romans
by Thomas D. Stegman, S.J.
English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition and Literary History
by Eric Weiskott
From Neither Here Not There
by Sammy Chong, S.J.
21st Century Corporate Citizenship: a Practical Guide to Delivering Value to Society and Your Business
by Katherine Valvoda Smith and Dave Stangis
