Gretel and the Great War
A Novel
-
-
4.5 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
A New Yorker best book of 2024 | One of Bloomberg's nine best books of summer 2024
"Inventive . . . Whimsical . . . Fusing period atmosphere with fairy tale, Ehrlich Sachs hints at modern themes while summoning an unexpected imaginary place." —The New Yorker
"Sachs draws from the madcap, darkly comic tradition of postmodern European fiction . . . Like Thomas Bernhard before him, Sachs is a very funny writer unafraid of italics and exclamation marks, which he marshals against the absurdity of the world." —Dustin Illingworth, The New York Times Book Review
"Adam Ehrlich Sachs continues to prove he is one of our most daring and original writers." —Camille Bordas, author of How to Behave in a Crowd
A lean, seductive, and dazzlingly inventive novel that shows us the dark side of early twentieth-century Vienna.
Vienna, 1919. A once-mighty empire has finally come crashing down—and a mysterious young woman, unable to speak, has turned up on the streets. A doctor appeals to the public for information about her past and receives a single response, from a sanatorium patient who claims to be her father. The man reveals only her name: Gretel. But he encloses a bedtime story he asks the doctor to read aloud to her, about an Architect whose radically modern creation has caused a great scandal. The next day a second story arrives, about a Ballet Master who develops a new position of the feet. Twenty-four more stories follow in alphabetical order, about an Immunologist and a Jeweler, a Revolutionary and a Satirist, a Waif and an X-ray Technician and a Zionist. Crossing paths and purposes, their stories interweave until a single picture emerges, that of a decadent, death-obsessed, oversexed empire buzzing with the ideas of Freud and Karl Kraus. There are artists who ape the innocence of children, and scientists who insist that children are anything but innocent . . . And then there’s Gretel’s own mother, who will do whatever it takes to sing onstage at the City Theater. Is it any wonder that this world—soon to vanish anyway in a war to end all wars—was one from which Gretel’s father wished to shelter her?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sachs (The Organs of Sense) lends a touch of the fantastical to Viennese life at the end of WWI in this inventive novel in stories. In a framing device, a mute young woman is being treated by a neurologist, who receives a letter from a sanatorium patient who claims to be the woman's father and who insists her name is Gretel. He proceeds to mail 26 "bedtime stories," alphabetically arranged, to be shared with Gretel. Starting with "A: The Architect" and ending with "Z: The Zionist," these interlacing fables feature reappearing locations and characters, and evoke Vienna's artistic milieu of choirs, painters, composers, and stage performers, as well as the city's abundance of sanatorium residents and scientists. Stories of broken families, the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and revenge abound. Feathered within each tale are short segments devoted to reminding Gretel of her mother's all-consuming commitment to her musical ambitions, which played a role in their separation. "N: The Neurologist," hints at Gretel's ailment with the story of a naturalist so obsessed with creating a lifelike taxidermied heron that he steals his daughter's voice. Throughout, Sachs keenly captures the pulse of a city on the cusp of immense change. This spirited volume lingers long after the final page.
