The Devil's Blind Spot: Tales from the New Century

The 173 stories collected in Alexander Kluges The Devils Blind Spot range from a dozen pages to just half a page in length: these tales are like novels in pill form. The whole is arranged in five chapters. The first group illustrates the little-known virtues of the Devil; the second explores love (from Kant to the opera); the third (entitled Sarajevo Is Everywhere) addresses power; the fourth considers the cosmos; and the fifth ranges all our knowledge against our feelings. Stories such as Origin of Iraq as a Case for the Files and The Devil in the White House display Alexander Kluges special genius for making found material his own. From the wreck of the Kursk to failed love affairs to Chernobyl, Kluge alights on precise details, marching us step by step through a black comedy of the exact stages of thinking that lead to disaster. These semi-documentary stories radiate what W.G. Sebald termed Kluges intellectual steadfastness as he undertakes his archaeological excavation of the slag-heaps of our collective existence.