Tyll
Tyll Ulenspiegel was a German jester and trickster, and legend places his death in 1350. In this novel the German author Daniel Kehlmann has taken this legendary figure and placed him at the time of the Thirty Years’ War. Since the book is titled Tyll, he is presumably intended to be the main character, but this is an episodic novel with no chronological order. There is a trial of Tyll’s father for witchcraft, some wanderings of a fat count, a meeting of Friedrich – the Winter King – with the Swedish king Gustav Adolf, and other events which are told with Tyll as a secondary, almost marginal character. There are other episodes, though, where Tyll plays a larger role, as when he is caught in a collapsed mine or together with a girl accompanies a travelling entertainer. But he remains a rather elusive character. However, the different episodes are vividly narrated and the many characters – except Tyll – convincingly portrayed.
