Herscht 07769

Herscht 07769 is a novel by the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, published in English by New Directions in 2024. It is set in Kana, a small town in eastern Germany, and its hero is a man who has taken a physics class far too seriously.

Florian Herscht attended Herr Köhler's adult education classes faithfully, and he came away convinced that the complete destruction of all physical matter is imminent. He begins a one-sided correspondence with Chancellor Angela Merkel in order to warn her about it, which is not a habit that makes him easy to live with.

Florian also works for the Boss, the head of a local neo-Nazi gang who has taken him under his wing and found him work cleaning graffiti off the town's surfaces. The Boss is a Bach enthusiast and the director of an amateur orchestra, and he is enraged by whoever is defacing the monuments to Bach across Thuringia with wolf emblems. Florian has no choice but to join the search for the culprit, and the havoc that follows is the main business of the book.