After discovering that his grandfather was a Nazi SS officer, Swiss teenager Xavier Radek anoints himself comforter of the Jews. Comfort, alas, is impossible in Grunberg's take on contemporary Western civilization. His vision is brutal. What we learned from the horror of the Holocaust is simply how to reproduce and amplify horror. A mother stabs herself over and over with a kitchen knife, while a young girl collects Snoopy memorabilia as balm against repeated gang rape. Even love has no place in this dystopia. Xavier and Awromele, the son of a rabbi, consent to become lovers only after agreeing to "feel nothing". And both abandon each other to the physical wounds wrought by world: Xavier to bleed out following a botched circumcision, Awromele to the fists of a violent group of boys espousing a warped interpretation of Kierkegaard. Grunberg's bleak demand that we reckon with our own brutality is tempered with absurdist humor - Xavier's lost testicle is named King David and becomes a spiritual beacon to the masses.