As the entry on Tyll in the Encyclopaedia Britannica explains: “The earliest extant text is Ein kurtzweilig Lesen von Dyl Vlenspiegel (Antwerp, 1515 ‘An Amusing Book About Till Eulenspiegel’) the sole surviving copy is in the British Library, London. For those who are not familiar with Tyll Eulenspiegel (his last name means ‘owl mirror’), he is a figure from German legend who is famous for his tricks, witty jests and practical jokes that border on the scatological even. Of course, Richard Strauss’s unforgettable tone poems probably introduced Tyll to classical music aficionados. There are many ways in which this strife-torn Europe, fractured by religion, intolerance and war, is a reflection of our own times.Tyll, Daniel Kehlmann’s biographical novel on Tyll Eulenspiegel, the picaresque German trickster hero, is a rich retelling of the stories that have come down to us from medieval chapbooks and nineteenth-century reconstructions that connected the protagonist to the Reformation. It plunges a modern reader into an astonishingly violent and dirty alternative reality.

Ambitious, clever, tricksy, self-reflective. It’s operatic in its gestures and heartbreaking in its absurdity.” - The Times (UK) “A laugh-out-loud-then-weep-into-your-beer comic novel about a war. Entertaining us like a jester on a tightrope and reminding us of the danger of a fall.” -Washington Post Kehlmann’s unforgettable joker we have a picture of humankind in all of its madness and strutting pride.” - The Wall Street Journal 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.

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.

Tyll daniel kehlmann review