A Beginner's Guide to the Merry-Go-Round

Philipp Worovsky, the hero of this novel, belongs to an endangered literary species. He is a modern good-for-nothing and rebel without a cause, a young man from a generation whose biggest problem is the lack of any tangible problems. This chilling, unfathomable emptiness is filled by Arno Geiger with a fireworks of irony and imagination – and with his hero's lies, extravagant fabulations to pit against the prevailing boredom, uneventfulness, and the well-cushioned social vacuum.

Confusion, however, comes always from the least expected source. In this case, from Lila and her love of the sound of breaking glass. How can Philipp resist this exciting girl's invitation to pitch a cobblestone through a window pane? Lila soon turns out to be a virtuoso in an art that seems easy but is hard to learn: the art of converting an orderly existence into a carousel ride...

Arno Geiger's first book is a delightfully witty debut, brimming with ideas, puns and suprising about-turns. Philipp moves nimbly through this modern picaresque novel, time and again confronted with the realization that "the rapid succession of events in an allegedly fast-moving era is unlikely to prompt breathlessness (although the heart must pump steadily if good health is to be maintained)." In this respect, Kleine Schule des Karussellfahrens with its breath-taking tempo is at least one revolution ahead of its time.