I do not recommend reading Arnon Grunberg’s The Jewish Messiah while riding public transportation. Or on a full stomach. Or on an empty stomach, for that matter. These acts will only contribute to the nausea.

That said, I do still recommend reading The Jewish Messiah. Brilliant and horrifying, the book is, at almost 500 pages (hardcover, Penguin Press), a kind of epic car crash from which it is impossible to look away, despite the gore.

Originally published in the Dutch in 2005, but released in English translation in January, The Jewish Messiah tells the story of Xavier Radek, the grandson of an S.S. officer, who, at the age of 16, takes is upon himself to become “a comforter of Jews” to make up for his grandfather’s misdeeds.

“The Christians had Jesus, the capitalists had profit maximization, the Buddhists could gradually melt into Nothingness, the socialists could uplift the wage slaves … but the Jews had nothing. No messiah, a God who never showed, and everyone hated them,” muses the youthful Xavier upon deciding that he should do his best to become a savior of the Jews.

Unfortunately, Xavier turns out to be worse for the world’s Jewish population than Hitler.

Infused with unrelenting irony from end to end, The Jewish Messiah actually uses Hitler as a kind of benchmark to which both Xavier and, brazenly enough, God, are being constantly compared. Just as observant Jews don’t refer to God by name, no one in Xavier’s house will refer to Hitler by name. He is always “You-Know-Who.” As for Xavier himself, he is set on a path that mirrors Hitler’s own youth and rise to power on his way to becoming the vicious, corrupted and violent leader of the Jewish State.

At first, Xavier is so desperate to make good that he throws himself directionlessly into all things Jewish. He joins a Zionist youth group, listens to Klezmer music at top volume, and attends synagogue. But Xavier’s love for the Jewish people is quickly overshadowed by his love for one Jew in particular: Awromele, the eldest son of an autistic rabbi. Xavier approaches Awromele in hopes that the boy will teach him Yiddish (it is initially Xavier’s idea to comfort Jews by writing the great Yiddish novel). Instead, Awromele convinces Xavier to get circumcised.

Xavier’s botched circumcision at the hands of a near-blind mohel is the story’s first true instance of human suffering. For Xavier and his family and neighbors, this event begins a chain of nearly relentless abuse and bloodshed, usually at their own hands.

The book’s violence, almost as pervasive as its irony, does not seem inappropriate. But at times, Grunberg does go a little overboard. For example, the character of Nino, an Egyptian restaurateur who funnels his profits to Hamas, seems to exist almost solely so he can be gruesomely tortured after he becomes an informant. Of course, I’m typically of the belief that, when if comes to torture in literature, less is more.

Following the circumcision, Xavier loses one of his testicles. He gets to keep the severed ball, preserved in a jar of formaldehyde, which he names “King David,” and, from time to time, appeals to for solace and advice.

Along with being short a testicle, Xavier has other issues to contend with. Although his stepfather loves him (and not in the traditional, fatherly kind of way), his mother despises him and, shortly after she nearly lets him die of the wounds following his circumcision instead of taking him to a hospital, she admits that she seriously considered putting rat poison in his milk when he was a baby. He also catches her making love (sort of) to a kitchen knife on more than one occasion.

Still, Xavier will not allow himself to be distracted in his quest to comfort the Jews, and even begins to see himself, with help of King David, as a kind of Jewish prophet.

“King David was the king of the Jews,” Xavier reminds his displaced ball. “And someday you will be, too.”

King David follows Xavier and Awromele, who quickly become lovers, from their home in Switzerland to Amsterdam. While there, Xavier enrolls briefly in art school, Awromele sleeps with every gay man who approaches him, and out of jealousy, Xavier resorts to murder.

Eventually, the trio make their way to Israel. Xavier abandons art for politics, quickly rising through the ranks of the Likud party until, while still a young man, he becomes the prime minister. Initially, both he and King David, which he waves around during powerful and heartfelt speeches, are hailed as the state’s saviors (a sect of people, both Jews and Christians, begin referring to the testicle as “The Redeemer”). But it is as prime minister that Xavier decides that comfort comes from revenge. And then things get really ugly.

Xavier begins to sell nuclear weapons to other nations — specifically places with long-standing grudges against another countries — and encourages them to point their new arsenals at their tormentors’ capitol cities.

He orders Israel’s own missiles directed at urban centers across Western Europe on the behalf of his Jews, with messages like “Thanks for opening your borders” and “Greetings from Anne Frank,” written on the side of them.

In the final chapters, the story becomes an apocalyptic vision that leaves Xavier waiting out his last moments in a bunker.

It’s a shocking book and it sinks its teeth into Nazism and anti-Semitism in a way that, 60 years after the Holocaust, most still consider taboo. But that’s what makes it so fascinating and Grunberg, himself the son of German Jews, does a fine job of putting this-all-too-believable horror show together.