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Murder fantasy during the Misanthropocene

Man is Everywhere. A Murder Fantasy

Yves Petry

Kasper Kind is almost fifty and on the point of committing a murder. He is a bioengineer who has been placed in charge of a small stretch of woodland that is suffering at the hand of climate change. Waldschmerz prevails among his colleagues, a profound melancholy caused by the death of the natural world. Kasper is not only preoccupied with the forest. Like it or not, he must deal with his pragmatic and successful sister Evaand her daughter Céline, who has abandoned her studies to become an activist. Meanwhile, he prefers to lead a secluded life in his gamekeeper’s hut, as far away as possible from all traces of human life.

One of the increasingly rare writers who still shamelessly regards literature as an artform
de Standaard ****

His musings on the ubiquity of the human species - and on a time in which ‘the collective’ governs - inevitably lead him to the public figure Max de Man, who he wholeheartedly hates. De Man is everything Kasper does not want to be: a man among men, an intellectual fraud, a moralistic drip. He is also Kasper’s former lover, and the biological father of Céline. The philosophical grounds for his plan to murder De Man therefore also satisfy his desire for personal revenge, even if Kasper would be the last to admit it.

In ‘Man is Everywhere’, Petry - a master stylist - puts on a show that is acerbic, linguistically powerful, and above all funny. This is a terrifically intelligent character study of a figure who gives more and more away whilst trying to hide. Humour, social criticism, and rich language are ingeniously brought together in this compelling monologue, with its unforgettable denouement. ‘Philosofiction’ of the highest order.

A witty, razor-sharp, and stylistically brilliant defence of the individual
VPRO Gids
Stylistic brilliance leaps from the pages
Trouw