Christian Kracht's AIR is both effortlessly simple and wondrously clever. Told in two disparate storylines, AIR begins when Paul, an avant-garde interior designer, is asked to find the "perfect white" with which to paint the interior of a data center in Norway, but then disappears. Next, we meet Ildr, a young girl in an unknown land, when she shoots a stranger with her bow and arrow mistaking him for deer. Are these two stories somehow connected? AIR reads like a beautiful enigma. With the entanglements of speculative fiction and the rich resonance of a parabolic historical tale, AIR is not a novel to be pinned down. It defies categorization. Rather, recurring objects and layers of narrative mystery invite the reader into a thrilling state of exploration and discovery. An utterly mesmerizing read.