“You can only be happy with your first woman or with your last,” announces Nathan’s father, thus summarizing the seducer’s dilemma. Nathan too is a seducer, albeit in different times. An editor for a Viennese newspaper, he maintains an emancipated marriage and an equally emancipated affair, paying frequent visits to his psychotherapist. Whereas Nathan’s father sought happiness in women and Nathan’s mother found unhappiness in men, Nathan intends to do everything quite differently. But what is he doing differently? Nothing.
More entertaining and facetious than ever, Robert Menasse paints a vivid portrait of the post-’68 generation and a society “that cannot even sell a bottle of mineral water without viewing the goods from an erotic angle”.
'A brilliant picaresque novel.'
Die Presse
'David Bryer's translation does the rudely mordant narrator proud, while Nathan's erotic odyssey reflects a generation as much as a single libido.'
The Independent
'A winning formula, redolent of the best kinds of existential novel, but updated for our times… a daring, engaging and entertaining study of sexual angst and the unforgiving alienation of the seducer.'
The Times Literary Supplement
Events:
Robert Menasse will appear at the
Jewish Book Festival 2009. Please click
here for details.
Interview with Robert Menasse
Read an excerpt from
Don Juan de la Mancha
Read a
review of
Don Juan de la Mancha in
The Independent
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