A few years ago, the internet was fleetingly abuzz with talk of the ‘sad beige’ phenomenon. Especially evident in contemporary childrenswear and nursery decoration, the trend was marked by a preference for neutral colours – creams, tans, oatmeals – and a handcrafted, homesteader-ish look. The parents who inflicted this style on their offspring were evidently straining for a certain version of authenticity; it was all very tasteful and open to satirical treatment. 

It’s easy to imagine Kūki, the Nor-wegian interiors magazine in Christian Kracht’s Air, encouraging the fashion. Guided by a philosophy of ‘strict reuse and ascetic renunciation’, it is filled with images of ‘clay pots, picturesque jetsam and old bicycles’. The novel’s main character, Paul, a designer in his mid-thirties, is thrilled when he receives a proposal from Kūki. Originally from Switzerland – like Kracht – Paul is living in the Orkney Islands when the story begins. A love for the muted tones of the North has drawn him to this corner of Europe: ‘those absent colours – everything washed out, lonesome, bleak, flat’. Although he feels slightly fraudulent here – he worries about real-life trawlermen spying him in his ‘moth-eaten white fishmerman’s jumper’ – he would be badly out of place anywhere more middle-of-the-road.

Arriving at the magazine’s offices in the city of Stavanger (too many Irish pubs and cruise ship tourists for his liking), Paul is given a highly eccentric commission. Kūki’s editor, Cohen, wants the designer to locate the ‘perfect white’ for a nearby data centre. The entire facility is to be