Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann

*This book is on sale because of minor transit damage on the spine.

The New York Times Best Historical Fiction of 2020
The Guardian's Best Fiction of 2020
Thrillist's Best Books of the Year

Daniel 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.

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. After Tyll flees with the baker’s daughter, he falls in with a traveling performer who teaches him his trade. 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.
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.

Translated from the German by Ross Benjamin

REVIEWS

“Brilliant and unputdownable.” –Salman Rushdie

“Profoundly enchanting. . . . A magnificent story. . . . 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

“Prodigiously imaginative. . . . Brilliant, blackly sardonic. . . . In Mr. Kehlmann’s unforgettable joker we have a picture of humankind in all of its madness and strutting pride.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Kehlmann, like Tyll, is a trickster. . . . Entertaining us like a jester on a tightrope and reminding us of the danger of a fall.” —Washington Post

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0525562726
Pages: 352