Summary
Goncalo Tavares: One Man: Klaus Klump, Joseph Walser's Machine
Made up of two novels, this book tells the story of Klaus Klump and Joseph Walser. The landscape is the same, the time is the same, the backbone is the same: a war that beats the rhythm of everyday life while tanks roam the streets, and man returns to his primitive state. Shootings, rapes, death and violence everywhere. Machines have taken over, there is no more life, and thus no clear distinction between Good and Evil.
Klaus is a publisher. The books he publishes are like small missiles that he directs against economics and politics. He knows that in times of war it is best to remain neutral, to be weak... However, he decides to resist. Joseph works in a factory and loves his machine. The war does not seem to reach him. Until the day he died. The two protagonists do not know each other, but their destinies form a harmonious counterpoint.
This literary diptych is a lucid reflection on the meaning of existence, on history, on the duality of a human being, capable of the best as well as the worst.
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