A shrunken head takes us on a tour de force to different parts of the world and through several centuries to the present day. Jan Koneffke's novel takes immense pleasure in telling tales, situated somewhere between adventure novel and the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez or Juan Rulfo.
Around 1780, Don Francisco, a civil servant of the Spanish Crown in Caracas, comes into possession of a shrunken head. It hangs on the wall in his writing room as decoration, observing the events around it very closely – and realizes in passing that it is developing a consciousness. And that it can speak. But when it finally opens its mouth for the first time, Don Francisco immediately has a heart attack – and the shrunken head gets a new owner. In the decades that follow, its travels take this unusual narrator to Rome, Paris, Frankfurt, London, Bamberg, Bucharest, Vienna, and Berlin, among other places. It witnesses historical events and trivial everyday occurrences. And, bit by bit, it discovers more and more about its own past.
The fabulist Koneffke succeeds in recounting the life of his immortal – but also helpless – hero magnificently. The clever and extremely witty protagonist, whose “incarnation” is the central theme of the story, becomes a fond companion as one reads his tale.
"A strong piece of literature. The whole book is a force of precise descriptions. I am happy to have read this book, which still has a great career ahead of it." (Benédicte Savoy)
