He is a playful realist, a rationalist drawn to magical games and tricky performances, a modern who likes to look backward. “Kehlmann is a gifted and sensitive storyteller. A spellbinding memorial to the nameless souls lost in Europe’s vicious past, whose whispers are best heard in fables.” - The New York Times Book Review “Brilliant and unputdownable.” – Salman Rushdie **Shortlisted for the Booker International Prize** Translated from the German by Ross Benjamin The result is both a riveting story and a moving tribute to the power of art in the face of the senseless brutality of history.
As a juggler and a jester, Tyll forges his own path through a world devastated by the Thirty Years’ War, evading witch-hunters, escaping a collapsed mine outside a besieged city, and entertaining the exiled King and Queen of Bohemia along the way. After Tyll flees with the baker’s daughter, he falls in with a traveling performer who teaches him his trade. Tyll is a scrawny boy growing up in a quiet village until his father, a miller with a forbidden interest in alchemy and magic, is found out by the church. When citizens become the playthings of politics and puppetry, Tyll, in his demonic grace and his thirst for freedom, is the very spirit of rebellion - a cork in water, a laugh in the dark, a hero for all time.The New York Times Best Historical Fiction of 2020ĭaniel Kehlmann transports the medieval legend of the trickster Tyll Ulenspiegel to the seventeenth century in an enchanting work of magical realism, macabre humor, and rollicking adventure. With macabre humour and moving humanity, Daniel Kehlmann lifts this legend from medieval German folklore and enters him on the stage of the Thirty Years' War. Between the quests of fat counts, witch-hunters and scheming queens, Tyll dances his mocking fugue exposing the folly of kings and the wisdom of fools.
As a travelling entertainer, his journey will take him across the land and into the heart of a never-ending war.Ī prince's doomed acceptance of the Bohemian throne has European armies lurching brutally for dominion and now the Winter King casts a sunless pall. In the courts he will trick the heads of state. On the battlefield he will run faster than cannonballs. When he comes out, he will never be the same. He practises by the mill, by the blacksmiths he practises in the forest at night, where the Cold Woman whispers and goblins roam. In a village like every other village in Germany, a scrawny boy balances on a rope between two trees. His handshake's like a pact with the devil, his smile like a crack in the clouds he's watching you now and he's gone when you turn. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020
0 kommentar(er)
