A Devil Comes to Town

by Paolo Maurensig, Anne Milano Appel (Translator)

Overview

"A Devil Comes to Town is a brilliant form of torture...a huge amount of fun." —Lisa Grgas for The Literary Review

A small Swiss village full of aspiring writers + The devil in the form of a hot-shot publisher = An international bestseller by the author of the Italian literary sensation The Luneburg Variation

Wild rabies runs rampant through the woods. The foxes are gaining ground, boldly making their way into the village. In Dichtersruhe, an insular yet charming haven stifled by the Swiss mountains, these omens go unnoticed by all but the new parish priest. The residents have other things on their mind: Literature. Everyone’s a writer—the nights are alive with reworked manuscripts. So when the devil turns up in a black car claiming to be a hot-shot publisher, unsatisfied authorial desires are unleashed and the village’s former harmony is shattered. Taut with foreboding and Gothic suspense, Paolo Maurensig gives us a refined and engaging literary parable on narcissism, vainglory, and our inextinguishable thirst for stories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642860139
Publisher:	World Editions
Publication date:	05/07/2019
Pages:	120
Sales rank:	183,205
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

PAOLO MAURENSIG was born in Gorizo, and lives in Udine, Italy. Now a bestselling author, he debuted in 1993 with The Lüneburg Variation, translated into twenty-five languages, and selling over 2 million copies in Italy. His novels include Canone Inverso, The Guardian of Dreams, and The Archangel of Chess. For his novel Theory of Shadows, published by FSG in the US in January 2018, he won the Bagutta Prize. A Devil Comes to Town is his latest novel.

ANNE MILANO APPEL, based in California, has translated works by a number of leading Italian authors for a variety of publishers in the US and UK. Her most recent translations include works by the award-winning Antonio Scurati and Paolo Maurensig. Her awards include the Italian Prose in Translation Award, the John Florio Prize for Italian Translation, and the Northern California Book Award for Translation. Her website is: amilanoappel.com.

Editorial Reviews

03/04/2019

In Maurensig’s crafty publishing fable, a Mephistophelean figure sows discord in a community of scribblers. A renowned novelist receives an unsigned manuscript about a certain Father Cornelius, the vicar of a small Swiss community, Dichtersruhe, which is in the midst of “an episode of collective madness.” The insular town is remarkable because “there was no other place in the world with such a high number of would-be writers.” The townspeople are content with their modest literary ambitions until a flashy Lucerne publisher arrives and offers a cash prize for the region’s best manuscript. Dichtersruhe’s citizens are overcome by vainglory and envy (as well as a rabies epidemic). These ominous signs convince Father Cornelius that the out-of-towner is the devil himself, exploiting this “pond teeming with disillusioned fish.” Maurenig (Theory of Shadows) skillfully handles the tale’s mysteries and ambiguities: has Father Cornelius really spotted the devil, or is he an unreliable narrator in thrall to his own infernal, Faust-inspired fictions? And is the widespread urge to write, to “indelibly engrave ourselves on the metaphysical plate of the universe,” demonic or divine? This nested narrative is an entertaining exploration of the manifold powers—creative, confessional, corrupting—of fiction. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"A Devil Comes to Town is a brilliant form of torture...a huge amount of fun."—Lisa Grgas for The Literary Review

"There’s a lot to savor in this bleakly satirical novel, from the description of an isolated town teeming with writers of varying talents to a unique spin on the idea of devils (as opposed to the devil) sowing chaos in the world. The nested structure nods to both nineteenth-century Gothic tales and postmodern lit—which in and of itself suggests the sensibility of this narrative of diabolical interests and literary ambition."—Tobias Carroll for Words Without Borders

"This nested narrative is an entertaining exploration of the manifold powers—creative, confessional, corrupting—of fiction." —Publisher's Weekly

"Maurensig gives us a masterfully constructed gothic horror story designed to keep aspiring writers up at night. A macabre little Alpine horror story elevated by masterful storytelling and language." —Kirkus Reviews

"Paolo Maurensig has written a playful literary novel that has the prodigious rhythm of a thriller"—Goodreads

"Maurensig highlights the traps in the desire for literary fame and the resultant money...Only a spoilsport would disclose the ending of this moral fable that makes fun of the scribblers of banalities, but also examines evil that is frightening because it is contagious – like the rabies spread by invading foxes whose cries are heard at crucial moments in the narrative. It wouldn’t be a Maurensig if the entertaining fable did not have dark seams."—The Sydney Morning Herald

“Maurensig has created a gripping short novel that is critical of the realities of publishing, a hybrid of at least two genres, highly imaginative, and involving even beyond the final page.” —Critica Letteraria

“Biblical, oblique, and lying somewhere between thriller, fantasy, and legend, the new novel by Paolo Maurensig, A Devil Comes to Town, is a disturbing reflection in narrative form concerning the darker side of writing.” —Il Giornale

From the Publisher

2019-02-18

A remote village in Switzerland populated almost entirely with ambitious writers gets a surprise when the devil himself comes to visit.

In this very creepy novella, the award-winning Italian novelist Maurensig (Theory of Shadows, 2018, etc.) constructs a mystery with the structure of nesting dolls, folding story within story until it's impossible to separate technique from narrative. In the outside shell of his story, Maurensig, presumably writing as himself, describes his role as "a pole of attraction for aspiring writers," all hoping to earn the novelist's authoritative opinion. One day, he runs across an anonymous novel called The Devil in the Drawer written by what he imagines is "a pale, blondish, aspiring writer rambling through the valleys of Switzerland." The anonymous writer, whom Maurensig names Friedrich, describes traveling to a three-day literary conference in the hometown of Carl Jung. While taking a walk in the woods one morning, Friedrich runs across a rabid fox and a priest, Father Cornelius, who tells the young author a story about the devil coming to visit a village in rural Switzerland named Dichtersruhe: "I'm talking about the devil-made-man, flesh and blood like me and you." Here we reach the heart of darkness as the devil introduces himself as Bernhard Fuchs, a publisher from Lucerne who plans to turn the town's old mill into a publishing house and establish a literary prize, setting off a wave of madness among the town's writers. By the time Maurensig puts a weapon into the priest's hand, Chekhov's maxim is in full effect. The language, translated by Appel (Snapshots, 2019, etc.), is both florid and fluid as you might imagine of Maurensig's gifts. Whether it succeeds as a commentary on the writing life or the publishing industry probably depends on the reader, but regardless, Maurensig gives us a masterfully constructed gothic horror story designed to keep aspiring writers up at night.

A macabre little Alpine horror story elevated by masterful storytelling and language.

Kirkus Reviews