First published 2020
Tyll Ulenspiegel starts as a skinny village boy whose miller father dabbles in alchemy and magic. When the church discovers his father's secret practices, Tyll must escape with Nele, the baker's daughter. They join a wandering performer who trains Tyll in the arts of entertainment and deception. As the Thirty Years War tears through seventeenth century Europe, Tyll becomes a traveling entertainer moving through the wreckage. He encounters a hangman, a dishonest Jesuit scholar, and the banished royals Frederick and Elizabeth of Bohemia. Tyll learns to navigate a world where survival depends on wit and performance. The war destroys everything around him, but his art becomes both shield and weapon against the chaos. This retelling of the German folk legend shows how creativity endures even when civilization collapses.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, war, fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, survival-of-the-wittiest
Setting: Europe, Bohemia
Period: 17th Century
352 pages · Hardcover · Pantheon
Content warnings: violence, war