Nick Currie, známý jako Momus, je plodný autor písní, bloger a bývalý novinář. Jeho díla, často sebereferenční a postmoderní, se vyznačují zdánlivě náhodným začleňováním úryvků kontinentální filozofie. Currie si vybudoval osobitý svět, který klade důraz na rozmanitost, orientalismus a respekt k jinakosti. Jeho tvorba zkoumá témata identity, Japonska, antiky, avantgardy, cestování časem a sexuality.
At a moment when, after centuries of desire and unrest, independence seems to be a real possibility for Scotland, Scottish-born, Berlin-based musician/author/journalist Momus, real name Nick Currie, offers a delirium of visions, practical and absurd.
Imagine a universe where every joke you’ve ever heard is solid, real, and occasionally dangerous—and all happening, one after the other, to the same small group of people. Detailing a series of filthy and ludicrous episodes in the life of a single family, saddled with a super-eccentric, sexually rapacious father, The Book of Jokes tells the story of the youth and education of a bland young boy doomed to record—in an incongruously serious, autobiographical mode—all the ridiculous incidents befalling his household. With their lives dictated by set ups and punchlines, the boy’s family quickly becomes luridly dysfunctional, and he realizes that the only way to escape his tragicomic fate is by trying to take control of the joke-telling himself. Channeling the spirits of Chaucer, Rabelais, Flann O’Brien, and Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, the Vatican secretary who compiled the first known book of jokes in 1451, The Book of Jokes is a happy raspberry in the face of life as we know and tell it.
Die Geschichte dreht sich um Herrn F, der einen Pakt mit dem Teufel eingeht, um ewigen Ruhm zu erlangen, jedoch bald erkennt, dass Unsterblichkeit nicht das ersehnte Glück bringt. Stattdessen entscheidet er sich, das Leben und den Ruhm hinter sich zu lassen und ins Dunkel zurückzukehren. Diese moderne Neuinterpretation der Faust-Legende von Momus verbindet experimentelle Erzählweise mit Einflüssen bedeutender deutschsprachiger Künstler und Denker des 20. Jahrhunderts und reflektiert tiefgründige Themen der Unsterblichkeit und des menschlichen Daseins.