The Cannibal Penguin’s Odyssey is both an autobiographical memoir and the true story of Cannibal Penguin, the heavy-metal group the author founded in response to a mid-life crisis, even though he had never planned to become a rock musician. But it is also a philosophical essay exploring the notion of radical absurdity and the possibilities for finding meaning where there is none. According to Yann Kerninon, radical absurdity is the contemporary version of the notion of the absurd that Camus, Beckett and Ionesco developed in the post-war period.

We all experience this conceptual absurdity in our daily lives: boredom at work, mind-blowing current events, the disappearance of any credible religious or ideological references, the impression of the world’s folly… It is as though punk nihilism and Monty Python skits had become the basis of our actual lives. How can we live in an insane world?

This book, which ranges from funny to tragic, is a veritable odyssey in search of lost meaning.

A philosophical essay that reads like a novel. An eminently contemporary subject: the sense of life’s absurdity. A style that will carry readers away.