The Club by Takis Würger

This is a surprisingly timely novel in the context of the UK’s 2019 General Election. With former Prime Minister, David Cameron, and current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, alumni of the notorious Oxford University drinking fraternity, The Bullingdon Club, the activities of such elitist societies are now in the news.

Hans Stichler is a young German boy who lives a rather idyllic life in the country. He’s a loner who when bullied takes up boxing and is quite good at it. This doesn’t make the other children like him but ensures he’s left in peace. After his parents die in twin tragedies, he is sent to boarding school where once again he’s ostracised by the other children. He continues his boxing and dreams of being back in the country.

Hans has an aloof aunt, Alex, a professor at Cambridge University. One day, as he’s nearing the end of his time at boarding school, she asks him whether he will go undercover at the university. She will guarantee his entrance under a false surname and in return he gets to study there. She tells him cryptically that there is a crime she wishes him to investigate. Hans eventually agrees and it soon transpires that Alex wishes him to join an exclusive drinking society, the Pitt Club. Hans obtains membership, his boxing skills aiding him, as the most prominent members of the club box for the university.

Over the course of the novel Hans gets more involved in the life of the university, the life of the fraternity, and the University’s boxing club. He meets Charlotte, a female student who is helping Alex to expose the crime and falls in love with her. I won’t give anything further away about the plot other than to say that it’s no surprise that the crime involves excess, alcohol and drugs, and sexual violence. 

The book is relatively well-written, though I did find it’s constant shifting of perspective from character to character (including sections from some minor character’s perspectives) a little confusing. That said, I did take to it after a while and it did keep me turning the pages.

The Pitt Club is a real Cambridge University drinking fraternity and interestingly the author has real experience of it.  Takis Würger is a German journalist who writes for Der Spiegel, but when a young man he enrolled at Cambridge University and joined the Adonians, the Hawk’s Club and the Pitt Club, before dropping out of the university. Whiles these clubs aren’t as notorious as Oxford’s Bullingdon Club, they are drinking societies that are riotous and are exclusive.

This is a novel about wealth, power, and the impunity that comes with it. At a time when two Prime Ministers come from such backgrounds, and at university were members of a club that revelled in smashing up restaurants and general antisocial behaviour; when Prince Andrew is accused of consorting with a convicted sex offender and faces little in the sense of concrete consequences, this is a vital novel that addresses important issues.

4 out of 5 stars