Kehlmann, D: Me and Kaminski

Sebastian Zollner is searching for his big break. A failure as a journalist, a boyfriend, and a human being, he sets out to write the essential biography of the eccentric painter Manuel Kaminski. All he needs to do is ingratiate himself into Kaminski's family, wait for him to kick the bucket, and then reap the rewards. There's only one problem. Kaminski has an agenda of his own, an agenda that will send them on a wild-goose chase to places neither of them ever expected to go. Told with Nabokovian wit and an edgy intelligence, Me and Kaminski is a shrewd send-up of art and journalistic pretensions from the internationally acclaimed author of Measuring the World .