Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann
I saw this book recommended on Twitter as one of the best newly translated books available. It intrigued me so I bought it on Kindle. I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump since the world went pear shaped, so I didn’t have high hopes of getting into it. But I got sucked in and two days later, I’d finished it.
The story follows the life of Tyll, first as the son of a Don Quixote-esque miller and later as Europe’s most famous traveling performer. The backdrop to all of this is the Thirty Years War, which ravaged central Europe in the early 1600s.
The story is told out of sequence, which was a little jarring at first. It’s also told by a succession of narrators who are not necessarily unreliable as they are biased. Each one tells things from their own perspective, which may differ from when a portion of story is retold by another. I found this to be absolutely ingenious.
But the true magic of the story is the magic itself. The book is imbued with fantastical occurrences, which may or may not actually be magic. The talking donkey, Origenes, frequently tells people his speech is the work of ventriloquists. And yet, you’re never quite sure if that’s the whole story. People cast spells. Dragons slumber. And yet, just at the periphery is a sense that it’s all just illusion.
The thing that struck me most about this book is how it so candidly describes the horrors of the war on the average person living in Europe at the time. You feel the starvation, you see the devastation. It presents it all in a way history books rarely achieve. And it made me search out more information about the whole affair.
To sum it up, it’s brutal and yet fantastical. Harsh realities intermix with delightful magic and jollity. Events occur both separated by time and all at once. It weaves a spell around the reader that once broken, leaves one feeling almost homesick.
I can give this book no fewer than 5/5 stars. It is truly the best book I’ve read this year and it has gotten me out of my reading slump. It is a book I imagine I will return to again in the future, hoping for a return to the feeling I had while reading it this time.
