{"product_id":"gretel-and-the-great-war-paperback","title":"Gretel and the Great War (Paperback)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker \u003c\/i\u003ebest book of 2024 | One of \u003ci\u003eBloomberg\u003c\/i\u003e's nine best books of summer 2024\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Inventive . . . Whimsical . . . Fusing period atmosphere with fairy tale, Ehrlich Sachs hints at modern themes while summoning an unexpected imaginary place.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"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, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Adam Ehrlich Sachs continues to prove he is one of our most daring and original writers.\" —Camille Bordas, author of \u003ci\u003eHow to Behave in a Crowd\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA lean, seductive, and dazzlingly inventive novel that shows us the dark side of early twentieth-century Vienna.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVienna, 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?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sachs, Adam Ehrlich","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52337243062546,"sku":"9780374614249","price":6.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0270\/9238\/5846\/files\/9823903482321_fd05067f-1d6b-4af4-b8fe-e50b3732c09a.jpg?v=1780437418","url":"https:\/\/hbswarehousesale.com\/products\/gretel-and-the-great-war-paperback","provider":"Harvard Book Store Warehouse Sale","version":"1.0","type":"link"}