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Martin Mosebach: The Moon and the Maiden (Der Mond und das Mädchen)
Hardcover | 192 pages | ISBN 9783446209169 | August 2007 | Hanser Verlag
English excerpt
The Book: The childlike Ina and her young husband, a lost wedding ring, and bewitched bacchanals in the moonlight, between the kiosk and the car wash. A novel of light-as-a-feather comedy and melancholy by Büchner Award winner Martin Mosebach.
Hans and Ina are a radiant young couple, their marriage almost a child marriage. Hans has just launched himself into a brilliant banking career in Frankfurt. All the more surprising then that he should blunder so badly in choosing their new flat: behind the main station, right next to a noisy street, in a 19th century house in which all manner of strange happenings unfold. Do demons exist? Ina starts to believe that the dead pigeon she found, to her horror, in the bedroom has introduced an evil spirit into the apartment.
Martin Mosebach’s light and playful new novel is both an ironic portrait of a city and an ambiguous love story. And then there are the young couple’s fateful encounters with their neighbours: a young actress with her boyfriend, and the ominous circle around the Moroccan caretaker which convenes nightly in the sweltering courtyard beneath a huge summer moon.
"His colourful, glittering and sonorous prose is currently unmatched." – Michael Maar, FAZSales to Foreign Countries:
"Das Beben": Spain (El Tercer Nombre)
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