My review of Laszlo Krasznakorkai's Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming at Splice:
The quartet of novels that now collectively comprise what Krasznahorkai designates as “my one book” certainly do not project a sunny view either of contemporary Hungary or of humankind in general. Baron Wenckheim’s homecoming to a Hungary that has exchanged Communist rule for Viktor Orbán hardly reveals the country to have made ‘progress’ (it largely still resembles the country depicted in Satantango), but it doesn’t seem that Krasznahorkai’s overriding artistic purpose is to specifically provide social or cultural critique — the characters in all of these novels exhibit their fair share of ignorance and venality (although also just fear and confusion), yet surely no more so than the common run of humanity. Krasznahorkai is indeed interested in the more universal corruptions of human behaviour, and Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming seems to declare a sentence of metaphysical doom on human existence.