{"product_id":"brenner-by-hermann-burger-9781953861306","title":"Brenner","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Hermann Burger was an artist who went the whole hog every time, didn't conserve himself. He was a man with a big longing for happiness.\" — Marcel Reich-Ranicki\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAppearing in English for the very first time, \u003cem\u003eBrenner\u003c\/em\u003e is a delightfully unusual novel full of dark humor tracing the childhood memories of the book's eponymous narrator, a scion of an ancient cigar dynasty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePerpetually shrouded in a thick cloud of cigar smoke, Herman Arbogast Brenner, scion of an old and famous cigar dynasty, has decided to kill himself—but not until he has written down his forty-six years of life, in a Proustian attempt to conjure the wounds, joys, and sensations of his childhood in the rolling countryside of the Aargau region of Switzerland.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEstranged from his wife and two children, he decides there is no point in squirrelling away his fortune, so he buys himself a Ferrari 328 GTS, and drives around sharing cigars with his few remaining friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this roman à clef, writing and smoking become intertwined through the act of remembering, as Brenner, a fallible, wounded, yet lovable antihero, searches for epiphany, attempting to unearth memories just out of reach—the glimmer of a red toy car, the sound of a particular chord played on the piano, the smell of the cigars themselves.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBrenner\u003c\/em\u003e is the final work from Hermann Burger, who died by suicide in 1989. The book comes out just days before what would have been the author's 80th birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House NZ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46670285930732,"sku":"9781953861306","price":50.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/18080493482883.jpg?v=1752766306","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/products\/brenner-by-hermann-burger-9781953861306","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}