{"product_id":"adam-ehrlich-sachs-gretel-and-the-great-war-9780374614249","title":"Gretel and the Great War","description":"A New Yorker Best Book of the Year \"Inventive . . . Whimsical . . . Fusing period atmosphere with fairy tale, Ehrlich Sachs hints at modern themes while summoning an unexpected imaginary place.\" -The New Yorker \"Sachs draws from the madcap, darkly comic tradition of postmodern European fiction . . . Like Thomas Bernhard before him, Sachs is a very funny writer unafraid of italics and exclamation marks, which he marshals against the absurdity of the world.\" -Dustin Illingworth, The New York Times Book Review \"Adam Ehrlich Sachs continues to prove he is one of our most daring and original writers.\" -Camille Bordas, author of How to Behave in a Crowd A lean, seductive, and dazzlingly inventive novel that shows us the dark side of early twentieth-century Vienna. Vienna, 1919. A once-mighty empire has finally come crashing down-and a mysterious young woman, unable to speak, has turned up on the streets. A doctor appeals to the public for information about her past and receives a single response, from a sanatorium patient who claims to be her father. The man reveals only her name: Gretel. But he encloses a bedtime story he asks the doctor to read aloud to her, about an Architect whose radically modern creation has caused a great scandal. The next day a second story arrives, about a Ballet Master who develops a new position of the feet. Twenty-four more stories follow in alphabetical order, about an Immunologist and a Jeweler, a Revolutionary and a Satirist, a Waif and an X-ray Technician and a Zionist. Crossing paths and purposes, their stories interweave until a single picture emerges, that of a decadent, death-obsessed, oversexed empire buzzing with the ideas of Freud and Karl Kraus. There are artists who ape the innocence of children, and scientists who insist that children are anything but innocent . . . And then there's Gretel's own mother, who will do whatever it takes to sing onstage at the City Theater. Is it any wonder that this world-soon to vanish anyway in a war to end all wars-was one from which Gretel's father wished to shelter her?","brand":"FSG Adult","offers":[{"title":"Used - good","offer_id":53209435603286,"sku":"9780374614249-G","price":8.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Used - very good","offer_id":53352920121686,"sku":"9780374614249-V","price":9.59,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0925\/5829\/5382\/files\/product_image_9780374614249_1.jpg?v=1777918861","url":"https:\/\/www.momoxbooks.com\/products\/adam-ehrlich-sachs-gretel-and-the-great-war-9780374614249","provider":"momoxbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}