The Last Wolf and Herman

A collection of two masterly novellas by László Krasznahorkai, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2025. In The Last Wolf, a philosophy professor is mistakenly hired to write the true tale of the last wolf of Extremadura, a barren stretch of Spain. His miserable experience is narrated in a single, rolling sentence to a patently bored bartender in a dreary Berlin bar. In Herman, a master trapper is asked to clear a forest's last 'noxious beasts,' beginning with great zeal before eventually switching sides to track entirely new game. Herman II relates the same events from the perspective of strange visitors to the region—a group of hyper-sexualized aristocrats who interrupt their orgies to participate in a manhunt for poor Herman. These intense, perfect novellas are full of Krasznahorkai's signature sense of foreboding and dark irony, exemplifying his craft as one of Europe's preeminent literary geniuses. The work has been translated by George Szirtes and John Batki.