Young Mann in a Hurry
Elan Kluger contra Nelio Biedermann’s Lázár
THE NEW CRITIC — CONTRA
Elan Kluger is a 22-year-old writer and founding editor of The New Critic from Michigan. He studied Intellectual History at Dartmouth College.
*New Critic paid subscribers get access to Contra, our criticism section, and Postscript, our interview series, for only $30 a year.*
REVIEWED Lázár by Nelio Biedermann, translated from German by Jamie Bulloch published April 2026, from Simon & Schuster/Summit Books, 272 pp.
Nelio Biedermann is the rarest of young men: a mainstream literary wunderkind and recipient of the New York Times imprimatur. His Instagram shows him signing books with Patti Smith and modeling for a Warby Parker ad campaign. The jacket blurb from novelist Daniel Kehlmann on Lázár, Biedermann’s recently translated novel, reads like stage directions: “A truly great writer steps onto the stage, in full possession of his powers.” Biedermann, a 22-year-old writer from Zurich, has been called the next Thomas Mann, the next Joseph Roth, and the next Gabriel García Márquez. He is very handsome, and his novel — a multi-generational story told in a distinctly European idiom — has been selling.