The Last Wolf

One of my favorite books of the ones I've read this year. It's amazing that the author managed to cram so much into just about 70 pages, using a single sentence, and still making it so readable, poignant and even funny. Although I would definitely label it as a postmodern work, the plot is easy to follow and the language is clear. The best part of the novella is that it is always hinting at something without really explicitally revealing what it is in detail, like building tension up to a high point without ever revealing it, leaving the reader to extend that tension beyond the pages. It isn't merely personal crisises or small-scope fears that Kraszhahorkai hints at, they are universal and apocalyptic in nature, which makes the incomprehensibility of it so much more ominous.
This incomprehensibility is expressed through (among other techniques such as multiple layers of narration) using the barrier of communication and language to thwart true understanding and meaning. The protagonist is a defeated German philosopher, sitting in a bar in a Turkish-dominated area of Berlin, telling a story after-the-fact to a Hungarian bartender about the time he went to Spain to write about a wolf in an area on the outskirts of the civilized world, using a translator to speak with locals. This play with language and communication is simply brilliant, and leads to moments of both defeat and exasparation, as well as humor.
If I were to compare The Last Wolf to other writers, I would say that it takes the fear of the incomprehensible that Conrad, Mishima and Lovecraft expresses in his more subtle work and mixes it with the virility of characters and crisises from the works of Kafka and Dostoevsky. If you can find it, I definitely recommend others this book!