War and War by Lazlo Krasznahorkai. A Hungarian archivist, Gyorgi Korin, wants to immortalise a beautiful manuscript he found at work by copying it onto an internet homepage; he sets out to do this in what is, in his opinion, the very centre of the world, New York! Korin spends the second third of this book explaining the contents of this wonderful manuscript, and it's five reoccurring characters, to his landlord's lover. He struggles to find a meaning in its contents and I found, as the reader, that I shared this experience with him. The more he divulged into its contents, the more he wanted to solve its mystery, the deeper my own curiosity became.

Korin's only other goal in life is, in stark contrast to the wonderment of his manuscript, to kill himself. He is not a confident person, he struggles to communicate, at least without blabbing on and on in sentences that never seem to end (such is the usual style of Krasznahorkai, but to this end these long sentences really emphasize Korin's obsessive talking), and this alienates him from others quite drastically. He knows exactly when he lost his mind and when his memory became redundant and ineffective, but he feels like he can't end his life until the world gets to experience the beauty of the work he has found.

His ignorance of the world, and especially of the world outside of Hungary, leads him to being overly trusting of others; as well, his inability to properly speak/ understand the English language he finds himself lost in a hostile world that is only out to hurt him, exploit him and make him feel isolated from any semblance of human affection. The last third of this book is an absolute rollercoaster that I will not spoil. Korin might be mad, but he is a soft character with no inherent malice in him, at least towards anyone except for himself. Amongst the many things that I might or might not understand about this book, one thing is certain and that is how cruel the world can be to the lost and afraid.