![]() ![]() In this Early Modern world the primitive is still prevalent. The village has a miller and a reeve like The Canterbury Tales and is swirled around by witchery of the foul variety like Macbeth. Kehlmann takes elements from Chaucer and Shakespeare and fashions them in his own interests. At the start Tyll creates a mini-war from shoe throwing that is as absurd as the conflict between the Big Endians and Little Endians in Gulliver’s Travels. Like Jonathan Swift before him, Kehlmann can create humour out of conflict and poke fun at the absurdity of war. ![]() The questions it probes are who is fighting and what are they fighting for. This is a dark world and its nearest modern parallels are to the Syrian conflict. The main character, Tyll, is dragged from German medieval folklore into the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Although Kehlmann is not a great champion of the historical novel, this historical, comical, tragical, mythological novel deserves to be celebrated. It is a book that can repay several readings: a picaresque novel, full of incident, that combines the narrative drive of a medieval fable with the psychological insights of a modern novel. ![]()
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