James Miller

Breakdown in Berlin: Red Pill, by Hari Kunzru, reviewed

Kunzru’s protagonist loses his sanity as Germany’s past and present combine to provide a disquieting counter-narrative to his liberal values

Hari Kunzru. Credit: Getty Images. 
issue 10 October 2020

‘I was what they call an “independent scholar”’, confides the narrator of Hari Kunzru’s Red Pill, a middle-aged writer from New York of modest reputation who secures a three-month residency at the prestigious Deuter Centre in Berlin. While there, he hopes to write something about ‘the construction of the self in lyric poetry’ and escape the pressures of fatherhood.

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