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A Novel
by Rolf Bauerdick
An award-winning journalist transforms his lifelong fascination with the world of the Gypsies into fiction with this exuberant, deeply enchanting debut novel—both whimsical and suspenseful—winner of the European Book Prize, and translated into more than a dozen languages worldwide.
November 1957: As Communism spreads across Eastern Europe, strange events are beginning to upend daily life in Baia Luna, a tiny village nestled at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. As the Soviets race to reach the moon and Sputnik soars overhead, fifteen-year-old Pavel Botev attends the small village school with the other children. Their sole teacher, the mysterious and once beautiful Angela Barbulescu, was sent by the Ministry of Education, and while it is suspected that she has lived a highly cultured life, much of her past remains hidden. But one day, after asking Pavel to help hang a photo of the new party secretary, she whispers a startling directive in his ear: "Send this man straight to hell! Exterminate him!" By the next morning, she has disappeared.
With little more to go on than the gossip and rumors swirling through his grandfather Ilja's tavern, Pavel finds curiosity overcoming his fear when suddenly the village's sacred Madonna statue is stolen and the priest Johannes Baptiste is found brutally murdered in the rectory. Aided by the Gypsy girl Buba and her eccentric uncle, Dimitru Gabor, Pavel's search for answers leads him far from the innocent concerns of childhood and into the frontiers of a new world, changing his life forever.
"Though the prose doesn't set off sparks, Baeurdick finds an off-kilter way to explore a dour period in history." - Kirkus Reviews
"Rolf Bauerdick is a natural-born storyteller. The fierce realism of his story spoils neither its magic nor its humor." - Spiegel Online
"A dazzling book, larger than life, exuberantly picturesque ...German literature has a powerful new voice—and most of all an unusual one." - Focus
"Bizarre and anarchistic, The Madonna on the Moon is enormously entertaining." - Die Welt
This information about The Madonna on the Moon was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rolf Bauerdick was born in 1957. He studied literature and theology before turning to journalism and photography. His work has received numerous awards, among them Germany's prestigious Hansel Mieth Prize. His articles have been published in Der Spiegel, GEO, and Playboy, among other publications. He lives in a converted flour mill in Northern Germany with his wife and children. The Madonna on the Moon is his first novel.
Translated from the German by David Dollenmayer.
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