A blistering, timely and gripping novel set at Cambridge University, centring around an all-male dining club for the privileged and wealthy.
Hans Stichler's uncomplicated German childhood ends abruptly when his aunt invites him to study at Cambridge, where she teaches. She will ensure his application is accepted, but in return he must help her investigate an elite university society, the Pitt Club, which has existed for centuries, its long legacy of tradition and privilege largely unquestioned. But there are secrets in the club's history, as well as in its present, and Hans soon finds himself in the inner sanctum of an increasingly dangerous institution, forced to grapple with the notion that sometimes one must do wrong to do right.
Takis Wurger is a reporter working for the German news magazine Der Spiegel. He studied Human, Social and Political Science at St. John's College Cambridge for a year before dropping out. During this time, he boxed for the University, broke two ribs and his hand, and became a member of the Adonians, the Hawks' Club and the Pitt Club. Named one of Medium's Top 30 Journalists under 30, alongside other accolades, Wurger's work as a journalist has taken him to Afghanistan, Libya, Mexico and Ukraine. The Club, which won the lit.Cologne debut prize and has become a runaway bestseller in Germany, is his first novel.
Charlotte Collins studied English at Cambridge University. She worked as an actor and radio journalist in both Germany and the UK before becoming a literary translator. She is best known for her translation of International Booker shortlisted Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life and was the recipient of the Helen & Kurt Wolff's Translator's Prize in 2017. She lives in London.
Title: The Club
Author: Würger, Takis
ISBN: 9781611854817
Binding:
Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
Publication Date: 2019-08-01
Number of Pages: 224
Weight: 0.2601 kg
A cunning, sinuous tale, Takis Wurger's The Club is so wildly entertaining that, at first, it's easy to miss its deeper mysteries. But, as it unfolds, brutal truths about class and gender and violence emerge, take hold and shudder through the novel's final pages. -- Megan Abbott
A guilty pleasure, but one we can leave sitting out on our coffee tables without a whiff of embarrassment. * New York Times Book Review *
Filled with love, sorrow, and beauty - from the cover to the final sentence. * Elle (Germany) *
Wurger artfully circles the dark secret of the university campus . . . His language is so transparent that the story is never weighed down with a sense of its significance . . . Skillfully choreographed. * Die Zeit *
An enthralling book. * Welt am Sonntag *
Refined, gripping, and elegant all at once. Wurger's language is precise and impressive in its clarity and concision. * Weser-Kurier *
The Club, Takis Wurger's exquisite debut, is a novel as rare as a phoenix, a story both beautifully told and white-knuckle thrilling. A tale of pain, privilege and revenge, The Club reads like something both mythical and modern, a fable whose pages demand to be turned. -- Christopher J. Yates, author of BLACK CHALK and GRIST MILL ROAD
