Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming Author:László Krasznahorkai ?Now, with Baron, I can close this story. With this novel I can prove that I really wrote just one book in my life. This is the book?SatantangoMelancholy of Resistance, War and War, and Baron. This is my one book.? László Krasznahorkai (The Paris Review Interview) Set in contemporary times, Baron Wenckheim?s Homecoming tells the story of a Princ... more »e Myshkin?like figure, Baron Bela Wenckheim, who decides to return at the end of his life to the provincial Hungarian town of his birth. Having escaped from his many casino debts in Buenos Aires, where he was living in exile, he wishes to be reunited with his high school sweetheart Marika. What follows is an endless storm of gossip, con men, and local politicians, vividly evoking the small town?s alternately drab and absurd existence. All along, the Professor?a world-famous natural scientist who studies mosses and inhabits a bizarre Zen-like shack in a desolate area outside of town?offers long rants and disquisitions on his own attempts to immunize himself from thought. Spectacular actions are staged, death and the abyss loom, until finally doom is brought down on the unsuspecting residents of the town.« less