If that latter name sounds familiar, it is because it served as the location of the eponymous 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was discussed - a tragic and macabre past that weighs on the setting in much the same way the cold, stark, unforgiving weather does. Kunzru’s protagonist - a man of Indian heritage, married and father to a young daughter - is awarded a fellowship at the Deuter Center in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. Any overused tropes end here, though, as Kunzru weaves an intricate fabric from a multitude of seemingly disparate elements - German romanticism, the legacy of the Third Reich, the Stasi, the European migrant crisis, the 2016 US presidential election - all of which come together to create this haunted tale that merges questions of privacy, transhumanism, the political ascendency of the Right in Europe and the US, and moral responsibility, among others.

The unnamed narrator, a struggling writer suffering a dry spell, embarks on a retreat to clear his mind and restore his creative faculties. The premise of Red Pill is simple enough clichéd, almost. Hari Kunzru, author of five previous novels and PEN/Jean Stein Book Award finalist, addresses the intersection of such existential quandaries in his latest novel, aptly titled Red Pill. It is this larger truth that the far-right, emboldened by the emergence of a reactionary political class all too willing to stoke the flames of panic and prejudice, have laid claim to in recent years, claiming also, in the process, the term “red pill” to describe their process of awakening to uncomfortable realities they accuse the left-leaning of not wanting to come face to face with. From René Descartes’ Evil Demon to Gilbert Harman’s Brain in a Vat, thought experiments have often sought to tease out whether it is possible to trust our perception of reality, to determine whether we can know with certainty that what we seem to experience with our senses is an accurate assessment of some larger truth. Neither is the idea that our reality might be simulated, or at least manipulated. It is with The Matrix that the term “red pill” entered our vocabulary and later memedom as we grew into our collective, online consciousness, but the dilemma between living in blissful ignorance and confronting the truth about reality is nothing new.

“You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” “You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe,” Morpheus tells Neo in the Wachowski Bros.’ 1999 film, The Matrix.

Red pill hari kunzru