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Jesus Christ Kinski
From the prize-winning author of THE GALLOWS POLE and CUDDY
Jesus Christ Kinski
From the prize-winning author of THE GALLOWS POLE and CUDDY
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Description
A bold and brilliant short work by the author of the Goldsmiths Prize-winning Cuddy
'Makes most contemporary fiction look bloodless by comparison' Daily Mail
'Like nothing else you'll read this year' Jan Carson
'Highly original, bold, inventive … A stunning rendering' independent.co.uk
'A hair-raising performance' Kit Fan
'Brilliant, strange and electrifying' Daily Telegraph
November, 1971. Berlin, Germany. Opening night.
Klaus Kinski, Germany's most controversial actor, steps into the spotlight to a crowd of thousands.
After years of making movies abroad, he has returned to the stage for a much-publicized one-man performance about Jesus Christ. As the crowd turn on him and violence is threatened, it is also very nearly his last. After this week, he will never perform on stage again.
Exactly fifty years later, a hypochondriac writer, housebound by winter snowstorms, becomes fixated with video footage of Kinski at his most manic.
In this forensic analysis, he strays into the darker corners of modern culture, and finally begins to understand the compulsive urge that drives artists to the edge of sanity in their pursuit of perfection.
Jesus Christ Kinski is a novel about a film about a performance about Jesus. It is a daring act of literary ventriloquism, a meditation on censorship, creativity, loneliness – and just how far our tolerance is tested by bad people who make great art.
Praise for Benjamin Myers
'One of our finest, and most deftly imaginative, writers' i news
'Radical and gorgeous' Max Porter
'A writer of extraordinary and incandescent talent' Alex Preston
Product details
| Published | 03 Mar 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 208 |
| ISBN | 9781526663429 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Circus |
| Dimensions | 216 x 135 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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Jesus Christ Kinski is extraordinary. It is an assault. It is an affront to decency. It is Klaus Kinski, right there on the page. It is hateful. And I loved reading it. It takes real daring to take on such a subject and real skill to carry it off with so much humanity. The talent of Benjamin Myers is something to behold.
SAM JORDISON
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The book's achievement lies in the throbbing life force of Kinski himself. His is a dark star, close to collapse. It offers no guiding light but continues to burn five decades on
NEW STATESMAN
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A compelling autofictional account which exerts a strange charm … Plunges us into Kinski's fevered mind … A riot of salty vituperation
GUARDIAN
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Brilliant ... The bravura stylistic flourishes, the wild imagination, the conjuring of a damaged and maddening psyche – this book is strange and electrifying ... When Myers's Kinski – vituperative, committed, possessed – grabs us by the neck and spits in our faces, deep down we know it's what we deserve ... One of our brightest young novelists
DAILY TELEGRAPH
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An experimental and distinguished novel ... An idiosyncratic and destabilising performance that matches Kinski's own
SPECTATOR
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Highly original, bold, inventive … Myers captures the dark and forceful energy of Kinski and his startlingly aggressive and vicious mind … A stunning rendering
independent.co.uk, Book of the Month
























