Afrika: From the International Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Director

· riverrun
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About this audiobook

From 'one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today'(Jeffrey Eugenides) comes a comic tale of casual barbarism, dangerous lunacy and accidental authority.

In the winter of 1884, the great colonial powers meet in Berlin. The order of the day: how to divide up the vast continent of Africa between them. For Legation Counsellor Strinetzky though, a minor Austrian diplomat drafted in to the conference so his superior can spend the day practising for a piano recital, this day of grand global diplomacy is a backdrop to personal crises. His marriage is edging towards the point of no return. He's embroiled himself into a career-ending expenses scandal. And, more worryingly, a petty slight to a Prussian soldier has landed him in a pistol duel scheduled for the very next morning.

As the leaders of European imperialism bargain and allocate, their allegiances to each other constantly shifting and the political game ever more trepidatious, Strinetzky will be relieved to make it through the next two days alive, if not with honour intact. But, as it turns out, much more is riding on Strinetzky's hapless manoeuvrings than his own life.

In Afrika, Daniel Kehlmann lays bare the absurdity and brutality of empire with imagination and deadly wit.
From 'one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today'(Jeffrey Eugenides) comes a comic tale of casual barbarism, dangerous lunacy and accidental authority. In the winter of 1884, the great colonial powers meet in Berlin. The order of the day: how to divide up the vast continent...

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About the author

Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and lives in Vienna, Berlin and New York. He has published six novels: Measuring the World, Me & Kaminski, Fame, F, You Should Have Left and Tyll and has won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Doderer Prize, The Kleist Prize, the WELT Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. Measuring the World was translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in post-war German literature.
Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and lives in Vienna, Berlin and New York. He has published six novels: Measuring the World, Me & Kaminski, Fame, F, You Should Have Left and Tyll and has won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Founda...

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