Barbarian Spring

On a business trip to Tunisia, Preising, a leading Swiss industrialist, is invited to spend the week with the daughter of a local gangster. He accompanies her to the wedding of two London city traders at a desert luxury resort that was once the site of an old Berber oasis. With the wedding party in full swing and the bride riding up the aisle on a camel, no one is aware that the global financial system stands on the brink of collapse. As the wedding guests nurse their hangovers, they learn that the British pound has depreciated tenfold, and their world begins to crumble around them.

So begins Barbarian Spring, the debut novel from Jonas Luscher, a major emerging voice in European fiction. The timely and unusual novel centers on a culture clash between high finance and the value system of the Maghreb. Provocative and entertaining,Barbarian Spring is a refreshingly original and all-too-believable satire for our times.

Jonas Luscher is a Swiss writer and doctoral student in philosophy at the ETH Zurich.Peter Lewis is the translator of such works as Sabine Gruber’s Roman Elegyand Roger Willemsen’s The Ends of the Earth.