Escape Into the Present: On Hari Kunzru

With the publication of Blue Ruin, Hari Kunzru has rounded off a loose trilogy about the cultural and political constitution of our present, stretching from 2017’s White Tears and continuing in 2020’s Red Pill. All are Künstlerromane—novels of the artist—a form the philosopher Ernst Bloch identifies as involving “recognition of and interest in the creative person who brings out something new instead of something past.”