Coin-Operated History

Amanda Susan Marie Hollis has been given the task of archiving the life of a work-shy librarian who worked at Harvard shortly after it was founded. The entanglements of history and life prove extremely hazardous and full of criminal misdeeds. What have the conquest of America, the Vinland Map, Mongolian hordes, Spanish monks, and the disappearance of a chandelier got to do with one another? Is Hollis a brilliant researcher or is she going nuts? Is there a truth beyond what can be archived? Nenik’s novel reads as a phantasmagoric prehistory of Google. Coin-Operated History has been translated from the German by Amanda DeMarco.