In a similar way, this book artfully conceals its own sophistication. Tyll is an entertainer – a juggler, an acrobat and a jester – whose brilliance is born of hard practice. Kehlmann will dramatise the same episode from different viewpoints, giving us slightly different information each time Along the way, he flees witch-hunters, finds himself in a collapsed mine outside a besieged city, entertains the inhabitants of a doomed hamlet and performs for royalty. The book recounts Tyll’s life from his childhood in a tiny village to his ascent to the 17th-century equivalent of showbusiness celebrity as a court jester. This is because it first of all succeeds as a rip-roaring yarn – one of the reasons it’s being turned into a Netflix series. However, it demonstrates that it’s possible to read Tyll with pleasure while knowing next to nothing about the history. I’m ashamed to admit that before I began this book I knew less about this conflict, which shaped modern Europe and cost millions of lives, than I did about the bloody but fictional struggles that tear Westeros apart in Game of Thrones. Kehlmann, who found fame with another historical novel, 2006’s Measuring the World, transplants his hero to the gritty context of the thirty years’ war, which I now know lasted from 1618 to 1648. Tyll Ulenspiegel first crops up in a German jokebook – the gratifyingly evocative German word is Schwankbuch – from the early 16th century. There are many ways in which this strife-torn Europe, fractured by religion, intolerance and war, is a reflection of our own times.The hero of Daniel Kehlmann’s new novel is based on a character from German folklore, a subversive prankster who challenges the social order with filthy slapstick and fart jokes, like an X-rated Robin Hood. It plunges a modern reader into an astonishingly violent and dirty alternative reality.
It's operatic in its gestures and heartbreaking in its absurdity." – The Times (UK) "A rip-roaring yarn.
Ambitious, clever, tricksy, self-reflective. Entertaining us like a jester on a tightrope and reminding us of the danger of a fall." –Washington Post "A laugh-out-loud-then-weep-into-your-beer comic novel about a war. Kehlmann's unforgettable joker we have a picture of humankind in all of its madness and strutting pride." – The Wall Street Journal "Kehlmann, like Tyll, is a trickster. He is a playful realist, a rationalist drawn to magical games and tricky performances, a modern who likes to look backward. 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 "Kehlmann is a gifted and sensitive storyteller. "Brilliant and unputdownable." - Salman Rushdie "Profoundly enchanting.
**Shortlisted for the Booker International Prize**
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